The ‘08 Health-Care Craze
If I told you to close your eyes and imagine the biggest issue for this year’s election, what would you imagine? Probably Iraq, right? How about domestically?
If you said “Illegal immigration,” you’re wronger than abortion. Every politician - from the socialists to the mainstream Republicans - have some sort of plan for health care and expanded coverage.
Using the Oscar Wilde Rule, there must be something wrong with this picture. So agrees John Stossel of ABC:
Candidates for president have plans to get more people health insurance. Some would compel us to buy it; others would use the tax code to encourage that. Regardless, insurance is the magic that will solve our health-care problems.
But contrary to conventional wisdom, it’s not those without health insurance who are the problem, but rather those with it. They make medical care more expensive for everyone.
He goes on, saying that if more people paid for their own health care, they’d actually generate a healthier health care system. Whole Foods does that with their employees, only paying for catastrophic bills, and their costs went way down, even as employees were collecting thousands of dollars in their HSA (health savings accounts).
Beautiful, no? Of course, this notion is not popular, and is therefore correct.
HSA critics ask whether individual accounts will encourage people to save money at the expense of their health.
Mackey has the right response. “The premise in those kinds of questions is that people are stupid. They’re not smart enough to make these decisions for themselves. It’s sort of an elitist attitude. The individual is the best judge of what’s right for the individual.”
It’s classic government vs. individual argument, and you know which side I take.
The fact is, health insurance is only expected because it’s expected - thanks to policies put in place in the FDR era. People who argue that health care is too important to leave to the individual don’t realize that we also let individuals have children, get bank loans, buy cars, and make huge life decisions without government assistance.
The appeasement of our Republican candidates to moderate/left-win “health insurance” baloney is another reason I don’t see a true conservative leading the polls. It’s almost like we’ll be voting in different salsas - they’re all Democrats, but do you want mild or spicy? Spicy = Hillary and Obama. Mild = Rudy and Romney. What if you don’t want any salsa?
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