10 Comments

How about insurance for each state? “National” is too “socialist”. Each state should require its citizen to have health insurance so that hospitals and emergency rooms don’t have to provide their services free to the uninsured, and raise the prices for those insured. The state insurance premiums will be the average of the premiums in the private sector. Anyone can buy into the insurance. Low income families’s premiums would be paid for by the state. I don’t mind having part of my tax paying for the poor’s health insurance. I mind to pay for those who can afford but refuse to pay the premiums and sponge on the system instead. The state requires drivers to buy auto insurance, lenders require homeowners to buy home owner insurance. Why shouldn’t the state requires its citizens to buy health insurance to protect its health care system and other citizens’ from spongers, and to insure those who cannot obtain private insurance.

Roger, love your blog but must take issue with your usage of term “right” in the phrase “right to health care”. A right confers no obligation on another (right to free speech, right to freedom of worship, etc.). An entitlement does demand an obligation of others (welfare, etc.). Tax funded health care would be an entitlement, not a right.

Perhaps what you meant to say was, “everyone is entitled to health care”.

PS: I gather that you see the terrible danger in tax funded health care, ie; if others pay for my health care they then have the power to tell me how to live.

But you know me – the great supporter of Chairman Deng Tsaio Peng.

Of course, Deng was also giving the orders during that little incident at Tienanmen….

(And no, I don’t accuse you of supporting brutal repression. But I do think Deng is an unfortunate choice of role model.)

The trouble with non-ideological pragmatism that values “just getting the job done” without caring how it’s done is that it pays no attention to the very real effects our choices have on how society is organized. To take health care as an example, the choice between taxpayer-funded, single-payer, government-rationed health care on the one hand, and more free market-oriented reforms on the other will have a profound effect on the nature of the relationship between the individual and the State. Making a choice without paying attention to the implications of that choice or an idea of the model you want for society –in other words, an ideology– is … well, I can’t decide if it’s like opening Pandora’s Box or McGee’s Closet.

Of course, slavish devotion to a political philosophy or ideology is harmful, too, which is the context of Deng’s comment after the wretched excesses of Maoism. My concern is that we don’t go too far the other way and thus become dangerously short-sighted. The cat’s color really is important.

Roger, be careful what you wish for …
I posted the following comment on my blog electricwords.com on 7/29/2007:
Comment: In the U.S. there is a highly developed medical infrastructure of specialists and state-of-the-art diagnostic tools which has been paid for over the years by the insured medical services consumer. American seniors on Medicare have the full benefit of this infrastructure and hopefully, one day, the uninsured or uninsurable population will enjoy this same benefit. On the other hand, in Canada they did away with medical consumer insurance and were left with no one to support their medical infrastructure except taxpayers. As a result, and left with no other option except to continually raise taxes (a story for another time), the government had to cut back on medical personnel, including highly trained surgeons who wanted to work more than the government system of rationing health services allowed . Many hospitals closed completely or had to close operating rooms and whole floors in hospitals because many nurses and other staff were given generous early retirement packages in order to get them out of the system and save money. Most of the better, qualified care-givers wound up in the U.S. health system. Hence, a boon to the American system and long waiting lists and substandard care in Canada. America deserves better than socialized medicine and those who propose it need to be carefully scrutinized before being elected to positions of power. A better option is to improve the existing system we have and forget about destroying it by emulating an already failed system to our north. We’ll have more on this … especially about a lovely lady by the name of Ramona, now resting in a cemetery in Niagara Falls, Ontario who would argue she is not an anecdote.

Get a grip, Rog. I, too, once had that stupid idea. And it is a stupid idea, make no mistake. It’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The insidious thing about it is that is sounds so gosh-darned decent on the face of it.

Here’s a constructive exercise: pull up a chair and a good supply of your favorite tipple and a box of tissues and do a string search for the tern “NHS” on the Times of London’s web site. Ditto the Telegraph and every other major paper in the UK. Read the first 10 articles that show up. Make sure you are sitting down.

The bottom line is that you wind up with what we have now–an unfair healthcare system–only one more inefficient, absurd, inept, heartless, cruel, deadly and unjust by several magnitudes. We’re really much better off learning from the mistakes of the British instead of repeating them.

“But frankly, I don’t care if the solution is public or private insurance, a combination thereof or something hitherto unkown.”

It will ultimately have to be a private enterprise solution—or we risk national bankruptcy. Government bureaucrats will never bother to hold down costs. Their bosses are elected officials who are fearful of the voters. Thus, the debt will continue to reach astronomical proportions. Only free market entities have any real incentive to stay on budget.

I think the notion of a “right” to health is pretty silly. But what we are talking about is the “right” to health care, which really means the “right” to have other people go to medical school, become doctors (or hospital employees, drug researchers, etc.) or invest money in drug research and so on, and offer it all to me for a price I deem acceptable. Where does this notion come from, and why don’t the people who feel this way go into these fields themselves and work for cheap?

I also don’t understand the corollary to this midset, which is that we “spend too much” on health care. What other terribly important things should we be spending the money on? Plasma TVs? Motor homes? Computer games? We have the best health care humans have ever had in history, but spending money as a nation to get it is somehow a problem, though spending money on absolutely everything else is just fine. In fact, the money “the nation” spends on health care is seen by many as a drag on the economy, whereas spending on every other category of goods and services is considered good for the economy. This makes no sense either. I think this is another result of the unfounded sense of entitlement we have about health care.

Sure, it’s a good idea for many reasons to try to provide the best health care we can to everyone. We are already doing a better job of this than anyone has ever done before, but we still should always be looking to improve. But the notion that there is a “right” to have others provide for my health doesn’t help that effort in my view. It just confuses the issue with unsubstantiated philosophy.

Great posts in rebuttal of Roger’s claim of a “right to health”.

Roger claims we must have a right to health first, since without health we are denied Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, if I read him right. But don’t we then also have rights to food, homes, computers, retreats on Bainbridge Island per the same logic? C’mon, Roger, give it more than 20 seconds of thought! And stop feeling guilty because you and yours have good insurance-you paid for it, in blood and sweat, tears and toil, didn’t you?

Thanks TomTom and Freetotem save me from a lot of typing.

Roger, the concept of rights is a negative concept. That is, a right does not positively entitle you to anything. A right can not imply a positive obligation on anyone else.

Your right to life does not obligate me to support, nurture, heal or protect you. What it does is preclude me (and constitutionally it is the state talking) from impacting your life in certain ways.

Look at it this way, if you existed alone on vast deserted island you would still have all your rights intact with no one there.

There is a lot of talk here about “rights” being a negative concept, as opposed to entitlement.

Not sure this is true.

The 7th amendment requires trial by jury…. doesn’t this put a positive obligation on me to sit on jury (take time off work, etc).

Look at the 4th amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

This is complicated if you think about from the viewpoint of this negative/positive thing you are positing.

On the one hand, I have a right not to be unreasonably searched/seized without probable cause.

On the other hand, the government has the right to reasonably search/seize me if it does certain things. The certain things, I suppose, prove the “reasonableness” of the search/seizure.

That seems to me to be a clear obligation placed on “others,” namely agents of the government and a system to support their actions, in order to protect my right against unreasonable search/seizure.

So…. you can frame the argument this way: in order to ensure that I exist so as to exercise my “inalienable right” “to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” the government has the obligation to take certain actions, and put certain systems in place to maintain my health.

=====

Also, the argument about “rights” being something you would have on a desert island is kind of absurd. None of the rights in the bill of rights make sense outside the context of nation and a government — they all protect citizens against aggressive actions of the government. The protection against unreasonable search/seizure, for example, is nonsense on a desert island.

Just some counterthoughts.