ConservativeINC update: OK, I’m an idiot, I deleted this post because, like I said, I’m an idiot. But I think it is important enough to try and rewrite as much as I remembered. I am young and should be able to remember more than you old folks.
Last night I watched 20/20 (you have to say “20/20″ the way Barbara Walters does, it’s the only way, the right way) and it was all about the failing American health care system. True, it is in dire straits. But the only solutions being offered seem to lean heavily on the government as an answer to our woes. According to Stossel there is another way, a way with more freedom of choice and less cost.
One of the most important parts of this show was the explanation of Health Savings Accounts (forevermore, HSAs). These are accounts that you can contribute to to pay for medical costs. This is a great move because it will instill some restraint on medical consumers. Instead of going to see that pricey physician for your head cold you may decide to take some cold medicine first.
Another thing that is important that must be done if we want real change is we need to break our dependency on employers providing our health care. (Maybe this wasn’t on Stossel’s show last night, remember, I, Mr. Idiot, deleted the original post. But this is germane to the argument anyways.) When employers provide health care for you there is no incentive for you to use the doctor’s office less, there is the exact opposite incentive. Divorcing the consumer from medical decisions, in the WSJ today (you have to subscribe to get it) I found out health care consumers only pay one out of every seven dollars exchanged in the health care system, only increases demand for health services.
Another thing that I really had never thought of is that there are people out there who are mad at insurance companies and (this one really threw me) doctors for wanting to make a profit. Helping sick people, the inane argument goes, should be a higher calling that suffices without the need for them to make a buck. Excuse me but if I saw my doctor pull into the lot driving an ‘85 Yugo I would turn and run as fast as I could.
Some interesting experiments in putting the emphasis on the individual health care consumer again were discussed in this show. There was a company that enacted an HSA at their company. The employees all liked it and the employees were also able to take home more money.
There was another story about this doctor that stopped taking in customers who wanted to use insurance. Instead he had this menu of services that he offered with a set price for each. The doctor ended up making about as much as the average physician, he had to use less people because he no longer had to deal with insurance company bureaucrats, and his customers, the patients, saved money because they opted for the cheaper prescription more often than the new, more costly pills.
What really got to me about this story was that we are wasting a lot of talent on facilitating relations between doctors and insurance companies. These people, bureaucrats, would be in less demand in a more capitalistic system opening up them to different opportunities. Opportunities that can add value to our economy.
I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about Michael Moore. Besides saying Stossel was stuck in the 13th century for suggesting the free market could do something the government couldn’t he also made the claim he would rather wait in the Canadian health care line because their care was better.
Tell that to the dozens of private clinics that are opening up in Canada - illegally. That’s right, friends, it is illegal in Canada to open up a private clinic. But you know what, everyone turns a blind eye. The reason for this enabling of scofflaws is because the Canadian health care system is not great.
A woman in Canada recently had to give birth in America because there was no space for her. People in every universal health care system have to wait in egregiously long lines to get necessary services.
“But what about the fact that people with universal health care systems live longer than us?!”
There’s a reason and Stossel made it make sense. We live very unhealthy lives. We are an obese nation and we don’t take care of our bodies. In fact, the cancer survival rate in America is significantly better than in Canada or in the UK. In the United States 25% of women who are diagnosed with breast cancer die. In Canada that number is 33% and in the UK it is 50% (the numbers are a little foggy since I am Mr. Idiot but the general trend is correct).
“But what about Cuba?!”
Cuba is so awesome to its pregnant patients that when they think there might be a problem with the pregnancy they abort the baby, forcefully. Oh, and that most awesomest health care system of theirs is a farce. There are at least three tiers: a really nice one for foreigners, a really nice one for the political elite, and a barber shop for the poor. Well, not really a barber shop but in some cases….
And the pot shot of the night went to Stossel. I guess Michael Moore was really fat for some time. It happens, I know. Then he went somewhere and lost quite a bit of weight (good for you). Where did he go? Canada? UK? Cuba? Nope, he went to a private health spa in Florida. Yep, the spokesman for Marx went to a private institution. Good for you John! BigT
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