My Views on Health Care Reform
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 11:04PM I generally keep this blog to design-related topics, but I decided to break with tradition. This essay started with an item I posted on my Facebook status update on September 3, 2009, which read:
“No one is his brother’s keeper--or healer. And if we are *forced* to keep our brother, we’ll all be kept by Big Brother.”
A friend of mine posted this, with the tag “If you agree with this, please post it as your status for the rest of the day.” I expected it to draw criticism, and was curious to see what would happen.
It appeared on a day when the Facebook news feed was full of pro-Obamacare one-liners that many people were re-posting. The one that sticks in my memory was the one along the lines of how “no one should end up bankrupt just because they got sick,” or something to that effect. I disagree strongly with this statement. It implies that because one has gotten sick, either a) it is perfectly reasonable that a doctor to be forced to treat them for free, or that b) someone else should be forced to pay. I happen to be among the tiny minority of people today who think the rights of A (the doctor) and B (the disinterested 3rd party) actually matter.
It used to be that doctors treated people all the time regardless of their ability to pay. I’m talking about way back when doctors were (rightly) allowed to make lots of money practicing their highly valuable craft that took years and years of excruciatingly hard work to learn and master. Nowadays, they are commonly vilified, denigrated, hated, mistrusted, threatened, sued, and nearly regulated out of existence. (This is starting to change a little bit lately, as all that vitriol is starting to be directed at the insurance industry instead.)
But I digress. My main point here is about Individual Rights. I own my life, and I own my body. My body and my health do not belong to Barak Obama, or Nancy Pelosi, or Governor Arnold for that matter. I have a right to deal with my doctor on my own terms, and she with me on hers. I have the right to contract freely with anyone or any company that wants to offer me insurance of any kind, on whatever terms, with any inclusions, or exclusions, and for whatever price upon which we mutually agree. I have the absolute right not to have any insurance at all, if I don’t want it (contrary to what Mr. Obama apparently thinks.) I have the right to buy whatever drug I want to use to treat myself, and you have the right to sell it to me at your price. People wonder how America’s health care system became such a mangled mess. I’ll tell you how: By the systematic denial of Individual Rights, perpetrated by those in public office who should instead be protecting and upholding them.
My rights in every one of the above-mentioned areas are utterly abrogated by the mountains of government regulations that have a near-total stranglehold on the health care industry. Washington’s solution? More regulations to try to fix the problems that have been gradually caused by decades of continually increasing government interference in this industry. This type of ever-worsening regulatory downward spiral was described by Ayn Rand in 1962. She wrote in her LA Times column, “When government controls are introduced into a free economy, they create economic dislocations, hardships, and problems which, if the controls are not repealed, necessitate still further controls, which necessitate still further controls, etc. Thus a chain reaction is set up: the victimized groups seek redress by imposing controls on the profiteering groups, who retaliate in the same manner, on an ever widening scale.”
I will give a specific example. Insurance companies are regulated state by state, controlled by powerful Insurance Commissioners. Thus, they are prevented from offering insurance policies that would allow someone to keep their coverage if they moved across state lines. So, because there aren’t enough options (without ever explaining how many would be enough,) Obama et al want to establish a nationwide Public Option. Why wouldn’t insurance companies fight this?!
I would be furious if my industry were subject to massive regulatory restrictions, then blamed for not offering more product choices, and then made to compete with a special federally-sanctioned non-profit, while said non-profit would benefit from all kinds of loopholes and special exemptions from all the regulations that my industry would still have to contend with (and there would probably be an additional tax or fee on my product to fund the other.) It is a typical Statist’s straw-man argument, to blame Capitalism for failures caused by regulation. We are told that “powerful interests” oppose this Public Option plan. Well you can bet that the powerful Insurance Commissioners would strongly oppose any kind of deregulation that would allow the insurance industry to better serve its customers and provide more product options. And don’t think for a minute that their motivation is Granny’s health and well-being. This is but one example but there are many, many more.
I do not believe in preserving the status quo in America’s health care system, but I don’t think anyone in the White House or on Capitol Hill has any ideas worth pursuing. I find it disingenuous of Mr. Obama to declare that he’s willing to consider any and all ideas on the topic. Whole Foods CEO John Mackey’s ideas are all great starting points for real reform, but since no one entrenched in power in Washington would ever think of giving up any of that power, I don’t expect much. I’m sure they will cobble together some compromise bill that will only gradually worsen the situation and prolong the problems, or shift them onto other unexpected recipients. This is hardly Change for America, as Mr. Obama loudly promised during the campaign.
Let me go back to my opening line and make one last point. The main thing I started out to say here is this: If you accept the premise that you are your brother’s keeper, as we are often told, then you must also accept the logical corollary to this statement. Namely, that there’s someone out there keeping you. In this case, it’s President Obama who wants to be my keeper (using your tax dollars, or those of your children and/or grandchildren.) The morality at the root of this is altruism, the belief that the individual must sacrifice his values for the sake of others. The alternative (and the antidote) is individualism, and rational selfishness.
I am by no means wealthy. I have worked hard and made difficult (but mostly good) choices to get where I am in life. I don’t expect anyone else to pay for my health care, or my mortgage, or my car. I have friends and loved ones for whom I would do anything if they needed help, the least of which would be to give or loan them money in an emergency (which I have done,) whether for health care or some other need.
Human beings are not all a bunch of ants in a colony or bees in a hive. People all have different goals, ambitions, desires, dreams and abilities. Individuals must be allowed to choose what’s best for themselves and act accordingly. They also must be allowed to fail. History shows that they choose well and succeed far more often than they fail. Give me some health care reform that respects Individual Rights and you’d have my support. And, you’d start fixing what’s broken with our health care system.
Ayn Rand, health care, individual rights, politics in Objectivism, Politics
Reader Comments (7)
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