Everything You Think About Health Care Is Wrong

As the Health Care Bill works its way through Congress and both liberals and conservatives quibble about all the things wrong with it (and how very little is right), the American People seem confused. After all, it was just a year ago that We The People clamored for health care reform in such a mighty voice that the politicians were forced to give it priority over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and even the economy! (Although the two are interrelated, but we'll keep it simple for now.) With jobs being lost at a frightening pace and the economy in shambles, the last thing that the incoming Obama administration wanted to deal with was health care. But they heard us. And they started to work.

Now, just a year later, we're told by our own polls that most Americans do NOT support health care reform. How did this happen? Did YOU change your mind? I know I didn't! It also seems like both liberals and conservatives are not happy with the bill that has finally emerged from Congress, yet is now being ram-rodded through the legislative pipeline. What could be the cause of such a state of affairs?

The answer, of course, is POLITRICKS. The usual combination of well-financed special interests spending time and resources to re-program how we all think and feel about any given issue. At one point during the debates, it was revealed that the medical insurance industry the biggest lobby in DC was spending nearly $2.5 million each month to influence the debate. Most of those dollars went into media. Suddenly various boogeymen kept popping-up, one after another: rationing, death panels, "socialized medicine," gutting Medicare, and the perennial favorite: higher taxes! Before anyone could sufficiently respond to one charge, they'd launch the next offensive. And, as always, there's the ever-looming argument on how to pay for it all an argument that is at the base of ANY proposed change in America.

Since the Mythbusters or Penn & Teller have been silent thus far, I am therefore taking it upon myself to tell you the plain and simple truth: it's all BULLSHIT. You and I, and all of America have been carefully taught to think wrong, like the old Steve Martin joke about teaching your kids inappropriate language and watching the fun when they go to school. I wonder who is laughing as the health care debate rages!

So let's start at the core of the argument: the #1 way that Americans think wrongly about what health care is. It is NOT gold. It is not oil. It is not pork bellies. In short, it is NOT A COMMODITY. Yet we speak about it as if it's a product! We need to scrub this idea from our collective thought. Instead, we need to see health care for what it really is: an essential service. It is the same as fire protection and police services. Note how often the three work together! Whenever there is a major disaster, you'll see police, fire and ambulance vehicles. We depend on these services when we're at our lowest, most vulnerable state. Imagine what kind of hell we'd have if we privatized our police and fire services into for-profit institutions"

You come back to your home after a nice dinner out with the spouse only to find your home on fire. You dial 911 and in minutes the firefighters arrive. Visible flames are erupting from one part of your home, but you think to yourself that most of it can still be saved" but then the fire chief comes up to you with a clipboard in his hand. He begins talking about your options: simple fire suppression, search and rescue, investigation and on and on. Then there are the fees: mileage, pulling hoses, city water usage and so on. All the while he's talking money at you, your home is burning away, and nobody will lift a finger until you show them your fire insurance card. "We also accept Visa and American Express!"

This hellish description of what could be is exactly how we do things when it comes to health care.

The #2 way we think wrongly is that health insurance is health care. Over the past 30 years or so, we've equated the way we PAY for a service with the service itself. The fact of the matter is that health insurers are middlemen. Their goal is not to provide customers with health care, but to provide stockholders and owners with profit. Therefore they work very hard to maximize their income, by steadily increasing premiums, while minimizing their overhead in the form of payouts, using such tactics as denying claims, underpaying for goods and services, second-guessing doctor's decisions and even kicking people out of their coverage just when they need it the most. It's not that they're evil. They're simply businessmen, doing what all businesses do: make money. The real problem here is that they don't belong in that position. They're a mismatched component; an unnecessary element in a system that ends up being a monkey wrench in the works. Because they hold the purse strings, they're allowed to overrule the decisions of doctors and hospitals, and we, the "customers" have allowed this to happen.

We can see on the surface the similarities between all the essential services, so we must ask ourselves: what's different about health care? Why is it special? The short answer is: it's not. The only way it differs is how we THINK about it. Or how we've been taught to think.

Rather than accept the idea that they've been hoodwinked, I've had people actually argue this point! "Heath care is more expensive," they say. My answer: in what way? Have you ever bought a fire truck? Do you know what a fully loaded police cruiser costs? Do you have any idea what the prison system costs taxpayers every year and what your share of it is? Health care is indeed expensive, but most of us will need their services less than police and fire. Lest we forget, taxpayers sent people to the moon, which was a ridiculously expensive proposition. We fund wars that have expenses that dwarf any projection for health care. When it comes to dollars and cents, health care for all is doable.

The next argument: "Medicare is going broke! The government can't run anything!" Yet we take it as an article of faith that we have "the best military in the world." So how can the government have perfection on one end, and total incapability on the other? If one digs into the details, we can trace most of the financial problems to politicians jacking money from one program to another. The fact is that private health insurance costs its customers 30 cents of every dollar, while Medicare operates at about a tenth of that amount: three cents per dollar. Proponents of universal health care point out all of the other countries that have government run insurance, such as Great Britain, Canada, Germany and France, which, by the way, provides it's citizens with the highest quality of health care in the world. Detractors then point out all of the problems with each, most of which involve money. Canada's waiting lists are all but legendary now. The UK is among those providing the worst quality health care and the French system is going broke.

Yet rational people realize that ALL programs of any type will be imperfect. They will all have problems to solve. If you're waiting for perfection, you'll be paralyzed forever! Instead, let's take a look at what we've got. First, our non-system is the most expensive per-person of any industrialized nation, yet we're ranked at #27 as to quality of health care. Detractors talk about rationing, yet insurance companies routinely limit the amount of coverage they'll provide for any given procedure, including chronic maladies. They holler "death panels" while insurance companies kick kidney dialysis patients out of their policy for some petty paperwork error. In short, all of the sins attributed to government run health care are being perpetrated now by our for-profit insurance industry.

When Obama was campaigning and talking about a single-payer system, he set the insurance cartels into high gear. They considered it a "shot across the bow," seeing a potential end to their gravy train of access to the public's wallet. After all, they have one thing that no other industry has: exclusion from anti-trust laws! So they can collude and monopolize as much as they want, and there's nothing that anyone can do about it. Some say, "They should be allowed to sell across state lines and compete!" But this is NOT a handicap: it's exactly how the industry wants it. Like organized crime bosses, they've divided-up the country into "turf." The collude, keeping prices high by mutual agreement, and a lack of competition allows it to continue while shutting out any competitors who might want to "muscle in" and give them any real competition. Until this state of affairs is changed, don't expect any real reform.

"and the only way this can change is if Congress acts.

This might be a light-bulb moment for some readers! This explains, for instance, why the notion of "single payer" was taken off the table at the very beginning! It also explains the vigorous opposition to a "public option," since the health insurance industry is one of the largest campaign contributors with the most lobbyists in DC. Your representatives the people working for US are mostly all in the pocket of big insurance.

Now here is where I'll step on a few toes, and those toes will belong to liberals. Health care is NOT a right. As cool as that sounds and as much as we might agree with the sentiment, rights are very specific in one way: they require nothing of others, aside from respect. For instance, your freedoms of speech, a free press, of assembly, of self-defense, of worship and so on do not require anyone to give you anything or be of any kind of uncompensated service. So, for instance, your right to a free press does not require the government to provide you with a printing press! But you're free to buy one if you can and publish what you will. Your second amendment rights gives you the right to own and protect yourself and your family with a gun, but does not require the government to provide you with one.

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