By James Wilson
A close associate of mine got a 5% cost of
living raise effective January 1. The
trouble is it will not be enough to cover the hike in her medical premium – not
near enough. The same story is repeating
in multiple versions all over the country as the Obamacare disaster infects
greater and greater multitudes. We have
heard about the now six million Americans cancelled by their insurance
companies because their policies no longer meet government standards – and the
standard official line that these cancellations are good for their victims
because they are forced to buy new policies that include pregnancy care for men
and gender adjustment treatment for the 99.5% of Americans who do not want it. But this is only in the individually mandated
market, where government is counting on massive purchases of unwanted insurance
to pay for the treatments of those who need them.
Anticipating
the delayed coming of the business mandates companies have cut back large swaths
of their workers to part-time status so their employers will not be forced to
buy all or part of their insurance. That
means employees have less income to buy much more expensive insurance when
government blithely tells them to just go to the exchanges – the ones that do
not operate in the first place due to technical incompetence. And when government legislates that fewer
hours will now constitute full-time, the employers simply cut hours further to
get under the lowered bar.
What
if we if insisted on authentic healthcare reform?
The
first awakening would be to the reality that authenticity in an American
context requires freedom. Even if we
believed the inflated figure of thirty million Americans without health
insurance – not healthcare, for free healthcare for the indigent and
impoverished has been law on the books for decades – forcing the entire nation
onto government-run exchanges to attempt to benefit less than 10% of us is
madness. Yet Obamacare depends for its
survival on forcing enough healthy people to pay for the sick that we remain
solvent on their backs. A healthcare
reform plan that reduces the freedom with which we have obtained healthcare in
the past is not reform at all.
The
second wake-up call would remind us we built the best healthcare system in
history through healthy competition between competent professionals. In a free market economy incompetence is
punished by failure and competence is rewarded with success. Competition is what keeps the game honest and
a level playing field is the guarantor of competition. That would mean the insurance companies are
not permitted to penalize people for the “sin” of having a pre-existing
condition, as these things in no way harm the actuarial tables by which the
companies live. It would mean companies
would be denied their own protected market territory because policies would be
portable from one job to another and across state lines. It would mean companies had to do business
across state lines in order to stay in the game. And it would mean tort reform to reduce the
crippling weight of malpractice insurance.
Patients should be compensated fairly for a loss and doctors who
repeatedly prove themselves incompetent or unethical should face permanent loss
of their license. When government knows
its sole responsibility is promoting competition it can stop tinkering with the
system – from which nothing but unintended consequences ever comes.
The
third heads-up would be to those who say critics offer no alternatives to
Obamacare. That has always been
hogwash. Congressman Tom Price, for one,
offered a promising alternative at the same time Obamacare was first
advanced. The Price Plan had all the
advantages claimed by Obamacare – from competitive exchanges to eliminating
penalties for pre-existing conditions – and none of the coercion. Unfortunately Price belonged to the party of
no power (2009) in either house and his plan was never considered by the very
leadership that condemned his party as “the party of No.” Is this problem too complex? To the only nation that has landed on the
moon?
The
Biblical Galatians declares Christ set us free for the sake of that freedom
found only in Him. I bring this up only
because it seems freedom has been the primary object of the abundant life He
brings from the beginning. It is
difficult to imagine a good gift that summarily cancels the best gift we’ve
ever been given. This might be a good
time to pray our way back to the drawing board – democratically and legally displacing
those blocking our path – and act on the fruit of that prayer. I bring this up only because it seems not to
have been tried.
James A. Wilson is the author of Living
As Ambassadors of Relationships and The
Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by
e-mailing him at
praynorthstate@charter.net
No comments:
Post a Comment