In less than 90 seconds this video highlights the upside-down priorities of Oregon’s Medicaid system. Lobbying groups have used the political process to push coverage for special-interest causes like substance abuse and weight loss treatment ahead of treatments for some kinds of cancer on the priority list.
Having decisions like these made by the political process: is this the type of health reform we want?
Those who advocate government takeover of health care and the elimination of private insurance cite the “wasteful overhead” and “high profits” of health insurance companies.
There’s a lot in this argument that doesn’t make sense. For one, most companies that are trying to earn a profit seek to eliminate as much waste and overhead as possible. Competitive markets force them to do so.
It’s puzzling to me that those who rail against greed don’t acknowledge that it is a powerful motive for efficiency and cost reduction.
While the health insurance market isn’t as competitive as it could be, due to tight regulation by the states, it still exhibits some characteristics of a market. If we would eliminate the practice of nearly all health insurance being purchased by employers, the market would be even more competitive.
The weakest argument by those who advocate for government takeover is the high profits argument. Reporting in the Wall Street Journal indicates that profits in the health insurance industry are quite low.
“For every premium dollar that they take in, about 83 cents goes out in medical costs — doctors, hospitals, and drugs,” says Carl McDonald, health insurance analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. The rest is spent on overhead. Net income comes to just a few cents per dollar of premiums.
Consider WellPoint, the biggest private health insurer on Wall Street, which has about 35 million customers nationwide. Last year, it paid out 83.6% of revenues in expenses. Net, after-tax income as a percentage of total revenue came to a princely 4.1%.
In other words, simply eliminating profits would only allow the public option to undercut the private sector by 4% or so.
So much for profits being the cause of the high cost of health care.
Keep in mind that in free, competitive markets companies can earn profits only when they satisfy customers, and do that efficiently. For a health insurance company, that would mean paying the claims it has agreed to insure at the lowest possible premium cost to its customers.
The fact that so much insurance is bought by employers instead of the ultimate customers of the policies means that we don’t benefit from innovation and competition in this market.
For example, one legitimate concern is that if someone is insured through their job and they become sick for a long period, they’re probably going to lose their job and their insurance. This would be at the same time they’re trying to recover from an expensive and debilitating illness.
In the life insurance industry, policies may have an optional feature called “waiver of premium” or something like that. Under this provision, if an insured person isn’t able to pay their premiums for a covered reason, the policy remains in force.
Do health insurance policies have this feature? And if so, does my employer offer this?
This type of innovation is present in the life insurance market because it is relatively lightly regulated, and most people buy their own life insurance rather than relying on someone else to buy it for them.
We can also look to the automobile insurance market for examples of innovation that aren’t present in the health insurance market.
“I don’t know if you’d call it passion or manufactured passion … the uproar at these meetings is counterproductive .. and it’s organized, which I think is the most disturbing part of it.”
That’s the Washington Post’s Eugene H. Robinson speaking today on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.
Host Joe Scarborough inquired is it disturbing because it’s organized?
Robinson replied that if he were a Democratic strategist, he’d be tempted to ask unions to send people to meetings.
Scarborough said unions been doing just this — organizing people to go to town hall meetings — for years.
The exchange went on for a bit, with Robinson several times chuckling uncomfortably as Scarborough made his points.
I think that the Left — including Robinson in his role as leftist apologist — simply doesn’t understand the depth of the feelings that people have regarding the government’s attempt to take over control of health care in America. These townhall meetings are useful because they’re letting Congress know.
Robinson complained that with the meetings being disrupted, people aren’t able to learn the details of the plan and the legislation, his implication being that members of Congress are in a position to be educators. Indications are that few members do, in fact, know what the plan really means. And townhall meetings are really a poor place to educate people on complicated matters such as this.
The whole specter of the Left painting citizens as dupes of various organizations and interests simply because they speak up at meetings is amusing at the least, and rank hypocrisy at its core. Didn’t our current president serve time as a community organizer?
“Possibly to avoid any confrontation with concerned citizens who have read the proposed health care legislation in Congress, HHS Secretary Sebelius will hold a conference call on Friday with health care activists and SEIU members.”
SEIU — that’s the Service Employees International Union — recently called for higher taxes in Wichita through Harold Schlechtweg, its local business representative.
Now this union will provide a friendly audience for former Kansas governor, now Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius.
Read more background at the Kansas Meadowlark post HHS Secretary Sebelius to use safe SEIU conference call for “myth busting.”
By the way, why does a union who, on its website promotes itself as “The Union for Kansas Public Employees,” have a leader with the title “business representative?”
John Stossel covers health care, particularly health care in Canada, on the ABC television news show 20/20. Why anyone would want to bring this to the United States is a mystery. Click on Health Care: Does Canada Do It Better? to view the video. Reaction from viewers is at Reaction To Healthcare Segment.
By the way, pets in Canada can get advanced treatment faster than humans can.
Is there a right to health care in America?
If you believe in liberty, the answer is no.
Back in the days of the Clinton administration and the attempt at health care nationalization, Leonard Peikoff delivered a lecture titled Health Care Is Not A Right. It’s well worth reading.
Speaking of the Declaration of Independence, the beliefs on which America was founded, Peikoff wrote:
The term “rights,” note, is a moral (not just a political) term; it tells us that a certain course of behavior is right, sanctioned, proper, a prerogative to be respected by others, not interfered with — and that anyone who violates a man’s rights is: wrong, morally wrong, unsanctioned, evil.
Now our only rights, the American viewpoint continues, are the rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. That’s all. According to the Founding Fathers, we are not born with a right to a trip to Disneyland, or a meal at Mcdonald’s, or a kidney dialysis (nor with the 18th-century equivalent of these things). We have certain specific rights — and only these.
Why only these? Observe that all legitimate rights have one thing in common: they are rights to action, not to rewards from other people. The American rights impose no obligations on other people, merely the negative obligation to leave you alone. The system guarantees you the chance to work for what you want — not to be given it without effort by somebody else.
Sometimes we see the term “positive rights,” meaning that they can be granted only if provided through positive action taken by someone else. That’s the way it is with health care: If you are to have a right to health care, it usually means that I’m going to have to pay for it.
What are properly known as rights are absolute. They are not given to you by someone else; they belong to you because you are human.
As a practical matter, the right to health care is fuzzy and fleeting. Yesterday there was a small gathering of citizens expressing their concern over the direction of health care. There was a smaller group across the street with a different opinion. I had a conversation with one lady, part of which went like this:
She said “Nobody asks to get a disease. It’s not by their choice.”
I asked her to notice my obvious condition of being overweight and the risk it carries for me to develop various health concerns. Is this not a choice I make, to be in this condition?
“Well, okay, some of that. You could argue that to a certain extent.”
I then mentioned that people voluntarily engage in risky behavior such as rock climbing. They expect government to rescue them when they fall and to mend their broken bones.
“Maybe they should be required to buy extra insurance,” she said.
So already the idea of a right to health care is starting to be qualified in several ways.
Would we accept such qualifications and conditions on our fundamental rights? I’m afraid to say that many people would — if they could get free health care, for example.
Today, about 30 activists gathered in Wichita to express their concern over the possible takeover of health care by the government.
I’ve assembled a slide show of photographs taken by me and others. Click here to view it.
For me, what I will remember from today is the story told by Wendy Aylworth about the death of her cousin’s daughter. The video of Wendy speaking is below. A narrative written by Wendy is at Canadian health care: a personal story of tragedy.
Related: Government Health Care Protest at Congressman Dennis Moore’s Office from the Kansas Meadowlark.
Normally I shy away from using humor when discussing such a serious issue as health care. But this is a humorous look at what lies ahead if we’re not diligent. It’s from The Health Administration Bureau, a project of the Sam Adams Alliance.
Here’s a message — much more than that, a heartfelt story — I received from my friend Wendy Aylworth. She cares very deeply about the direction America is headed regarding health care. Now her family has suffered a tragedy caused by government control of medicine. Here’s her story.
This issue touches close to my heart. Government should not be the entity to decide if you’re worth giving medical care. This Friday I’ll be attending a rally titled “Hands Off My Health Care.” (See Wichita tea party planned to protest government-run health care for details about the Wichita rally.)
Rallies are being held nationwide in every city where a Senator has a local office. Gather outside the building from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm.
I’ll attend in memory of my Cousin Leita, who passed away last Thursday at the age of 29 having been neglected and ignored by the “FREE” Health Care in Canada. They say it’s FREE; it only costs you YOUR LIFE!
My cousins are Canadians. They’ve always told me their health care system is a source of national pride; one they believed in. My cousin is a caring, trusting, compassionate person, and suddenly, acutely, needed help.
My cousin’s 29 year-old daughter became ill and her mother, my first cousin, took her to the hospital emergency department. After checking with the triage desk, Leita, known to them to be a heart patient, waited five and one-half hours in excruciating abdominal pain in the waiting room before she was finally taken back to be examined. By then she was coughing up blood. She was given something for nausea and pain, and then sent home and told to go get an ultrasound at another location the next day.
She couldn’t make it through the night and woke her mother early in the morning. Her mom phoned ahead to ask the emergency room workers whether they were busy at that time, and if they could please take her daughter back to be seen just as soon as they arrived. The response was anger that she would say such an “abusive” thing to them. My cousin brought her daughter to the emergency room and found the waiting room completely empty. But the triage person refused to take her back. She was in extreme abdominal pain and had been battling this “cold” for almost two months. Finally they took her back, felt her abdomen and decided perhaps her liver had a mass in it. Later that day she was given a biopsy and told the results would be back in eight days. My cousin told me it was so wonderful they did the biopsy at the hospital because if her daughter had not been admitted she would have had to go on the waiting list for a biopsy — a three month wait.
An X-ray showed spots on her daughter’s lungs. The personnel told her they suspected liver cancer spread to her lungs.
She was given a bed. Since the specialist was leaving on vacation, Leita would have to wait until July 6th, 2009 for an appointment with him. I urged my cousin to get her daughter to a hospital with an Oncologist immediately, and began my own search for a place. It turned out, due to the Canadian government’s restrictions on hiring specialists, the nearest Oncologist was a two and one-half hour drive away. This would require a transfer to the other medical facility.
The government rules in the Canadian health care system did not allow my cousin to do this. Seeing a specialist even in oil-rich Alberta requires a referral from the family doctor. The family doctor had run liver enzyme tests in November 2008 due to the medication my cousin was on, and had not reported any anomaly in the results. She declined to refer Leita elsewhere, but was very nice about it. My cousin stayed at her daughter’s bedside while I attempted to find some location she could go and be seen by an Oncologist, or some way around the family doctor’s blockade.
My cousin said her daughter could not move and that even trying to speak made her vomit. I asked what they were giving her for nausea and was told when I reached her by phone a couple days later that it was shots.
I asked why they didn’t just give her anti-nausea medication in her IV because I’d recently had surgery under general anesthesia and the new medicine they put in my IV had completely eliminated nausea. Well, it turns out the hospital did not have her on an IV. I guess this saves on having to also put in a catheter in and empty the catheter bag. So my cousin’s daughter was left to dehydrate, while still battling to keep from vomiting — and no IV even though she was in the hospital with a mass in her liver strongly suspected to be malignant. I gathered info from a website on the necessity of an IV and emailed it to my cousin in Canada. The next day, her daughter got an IV.
Two days after this the results of the biopsy came back. It was confirmed to be cancer of the liver just as they thought, and a fast-growing type. Again urging help for her, calling, emailing, messaging people in her province, doing everything I could to try and get her somewhere to see an Oncologist — none of that worked. Not only was my cousin’s daughter’s life on the line, but my cousin explained she herself was not well enough to travel, and was on a wait list for heart care and also actually needed to be at the medical center in Calgary where the ONLY Cardiologist for the province was (and also where the Oncologist was).
But rules are rules and neither could be seen. Logically she should have been taken to the Medical Center in Calgary, hospitalized, and received care. It didn’t happen. The family doctor said my cousin’s daughter could just use the “Cancer Centre” there at the hospital they were already in. No need for a transfer. This is when my cousin discovered there was no Oncologist at all for their Cancer Centre, but only an internist (and he was on vacation). My cousin told me her family doc was a really nice lady. And so my cousin trusted the health system.
Her daughter’s case would go before the “Cancer Board” the week the internist returned from vacation. My cousin’s daughter passed away the night of July 9, 2009. She was only 29.
I hope you will please attend the rally to stop government take over of health care, sign many petitions against any expansion of government powers, and email links to petitions and information on to as many of your friends as possible. Also please phone your senators and Congressional representatives. The number to phone is memorable and fitting for the career politician in Congress: 1-877-SOB-USOB. That toll free line is often busy, so you can also find their direct phone numbers at www.house.gov or www.senate.gov.
I’ve contacted individual citizens in Canada who’ve told me the Province of Alberta has excellent health care. They were comparing it to their own province. So my cousin’s experience was a “GOOD ONE.” This is what we have to look forward to if you let government take control. The federal government already controls 51 cents of every health care dollar spent. The federal government’s controls, red tape, and refusal to allow states, doctors, and we the people our own choices is the TRUE cause of the problems with our health care system.
The Federal government does not allow YOU to take a deduction from your taxes if you purchase your own health insurance. Politicians deliberately set it up so only your employer can take a tax deduction for buying your health insurance for you. With this arrangement politicians guarantee that you’ll live in fear of losing your job AND your health insurance. And, then they know we will have to cry to them to FIX it.
Politicians always set things up so there are more problems that only THEY can fix (and they make you believe it with their propaganda). Nearly every American lives in FEAR of losing their health insurance because this keeps us right where politicians want us. They back us into the corner and extract more from us each time, with each created problem. But they WILL NOT fix the actual problem.
If they’d let you buy your own policy and let you deduct it from your taxes your insurance would be portable. And, for those who cannot afford at the moment to purchase their own policy, politicians could just offer vouchers. In reality there are only 8 million U.S. citizens without their own health insurance policy beyond their own choosing. The 48 million number you’ve been told is an outright lie.
The maize of government regulations is so great that many physicians and nurses have quit seeing patients. They can make a much higher income as expert witnesses or simply in another field. The Congress and the Administration refuse to place caps on medical malpractice awards for various damages not having anything to do with actual medical expenses or future expenses, and juries do not see the full story.
This is your life and the life of your children at stake. First it will be the weak who are “expensed.”
Please attend this rally!
Thanks,
Wendy Aylworth
p.s. If you let government take over your health care there will soon be one growth industry remaining in America: funerals.
Google “We Surround Them” (click here to perform this search), or look to the 912 groups for a rally near you. The Tea Party Patriots Social Network also has information.
You can contact Wendy at MorticianForGov@gmail.com.