Reforming Healthcare Reform

I have expressed my opinion on so-called healthcare reform numerous times since I began filling this space in 2009. Now that the Republicans have re-taken Congress and the White House, talk of repealing Obama’s signature achievement has become headline news again. In this atmosphere of true hope for positive change, there are still mountains of misunderstanding and deep canyons of faulty assumptions littering both sides of the debate.

Someone shared a picture on Facebook recently that asked if we could afford $2 billion for an election, why could we not afford “free” healthcare. This kind of mindless misrepresentation is rampant. First of all, there is no logical connection between the money spent on the regular operation of our election system and healthcare. More to the point, we spent $3.2 TRILLION on healthcare in 2015. Against that three thousand billion someone wished compare two billion.

Beyond the obvious lack of fiscal and mathematical understanding evident in the Facebook picture, there is a more serious problem with any argument that champions “free” healthcare. Ignoring the fact that healthcare provided by the government is not “free,” for someone must obviously pay for it, there is a weightier issue: there is no basis in the US Constitution for nationalized healthcare. All those who lobby for any type of government mandated healthcare operate on the false assumption that healthcare is a human right. It is not.

I have heard some try to lodge the right to healthcare under the “pursuit of life, liberty and happiness” listed in the Declaration of Independence as “unalienable rights” guaranteed by the Creator. There is great irony here given that many who propose this argument deny the existence of a Creator, but that is immaterial. Since the Declaration predates health insurance by 150 years, it is doubtful that the framers had such a “right” in mind at the time. If one argues for a dynamic interpretation of our Founding Fathers’ words, it remains highly illogical and impractical to suppose they can apply to “free” healthcare.  Taking this approach would demand that food and shelter also be provided for “free,” since they too are necessary to life, etc.

Nationalizing (and hence paying for) healthcare is a socialist wealth re-distribution plan and nothing more. As I said in my Open Letter to Debbie Stabenow back in 2009, any plan that, “requires the robbing of citizen Peter to pay citizen Paul's medical bills” is unconstitutional and generally unsupported by a majority of Americans. The election of Donald Trump (and many other Republicans) this cycle suggests that people are still opposed to nationalized healthcare. Trump and many congressional candidates who won election made repealing Obamacare a top priority. I will be a job well-done if they can accomplish it.

What these repeal-minded people should not do is replace Obamacare with another socialist scheme. If they can conjure a way to make the healthcare industry a truly free marketplace and remove the hobbling government restrictions on insurance companies, I believe real reform will happen. If insurance is made portable and not bound to state borders; if hospitals and doctors begin to charge what it costs instead of charging what insurance will pay; and most important, if consumers are free to shop for healthcare, competition will drive prices down.

There will still be some who cannot afford healthcare. For them there is Medicare and Medicaid, each of which needs vast restructuring to eliminate fraud and abuse, but each of which can serve the less fortunate without massive wealth redistribution if we insist on some type of government welfare. For Christians, there is also charity, which for almost two thousand years was the only option for healthcare. Clinics and doctors planted in depressed areas and supported by churches could take much of the weight off the clumsy Federal welfare system. It is, after all, a Christian duty to care for the needs of one’s neighbor. If we did that properly, government healthcare would be all but unnecessary.