10 Reasons to Oppose Obamacare, part 1
For several weeks, I have focused my editions of the daily republican on the health care reform proposals working their way through congress at the behest of President Obama. In the next four posts, we will complete this series with two final topics: ten reasons to oppose the President’s plan and ten principles for a republican approach to health care. Today, the first five objections to Obamacare:
1. Fiscal Irresponsibility: The increase in the 10-year deficit projection to $9 trillion only underscores a point that was obvious from the beginning of this debate: the US can’t afford these health care savings. The Obama administration estimates that its health care program will add $1 trillion to this deficit, but given its already-demonstrated tendency toward rosy economic projections and the long history of entitlements far exceeding their estimated costs, there is every reason to believe that this is far too low. Borrowing will account for more than 40% of government spending this year, an unsustainable pace. As the national debt explodes, we will have a diminishing control over our fiscal future as a larger and larger percentage of government spending and the national GDP is committed to debt service and entitlements. This will leave us at the mercy of international investors willing to finance our debt at the rising interests rates that will be needed to attract scarce capital.
2. Socialized risk: The heavy-handed regulation of the private health insurance industry will not only threaten the existence of the private health insurance industry (see below), but remove all connection between health and health insurance premiums. Insurance is meant to protect people against unlikely but financially-devastating events. Since not all classes of people have the same risk profile, insurance premiums naturally vary. The Obama plan brings this to an end, also ending any financial incentive for responsible living.
3 Socialized life: When health care is nationalized, whether directly through a single-payer system or indirectly through heavy regulation with or without a “public option,” every decision that affects an individual’s health has public consequences. Taxes and regulations on newly “anti-social” behavior are sure to follow.
4. The public option minus the option: Many liberals are not even subtle about the fact that the “public option” health insurance plan, freed from any financial constraints imposed upon private insurance companies and buttressed by a regime of vast regulation upon those companies, is only a temporary stop on the way to single-payer health care. President Obama’s most shameful talking point in this debate has been his much-repeated claim, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that anyone who wants to keep his health insurance will be able to. Three quick reasons this will not be the case: a. all grandfathered health care options disappear when a person changes jobs; b. under the law, employers may pay an 8% payroll tax rather than provide private insurance, which some who currently provide insurance will undoubtedly choose to do; c. it is a moral certainty that the plan’s regulations will set off a series of insurance company bankruptcies, sales, and mergers that will entirely change the industry and its options.
5. The duty to die: The Senate “gang of six” can remove every expert board or panel in the House bill without freeing the President’s proposed reforms from one of its most troubling implications. If all health care spending is collectivized into one national health care “bill,” then it is impossible to avoid the implication that it is one’s public duty to die when one is no longer “useful” or requires an “excessive” degree of medical care to survive. A revitalized form of social Darwinism will force the old, weak, and disabled to justify their existence against the subtle, often unspoken, but unmistakable pressure to get out of the way.
Saturday: the rest of the list.
No related posts.
While I agree with your basic argument that Obama’s health care reform is bad, there still remains the uncomfortable fact that the current system is in need of reform. Capitalism is, by definition, efficient, and when creating a more prosperous society this efficiency is invaluable. However, in the case of human life the virtue of efficiency becomes not simply a vice, but a monster, intent on consuming the weak to nurture the strong.
The fundamental question one must ask oneself is, “Should human beings be given life and medical insurance simply based on their own personal worth as judged by the market?” Wages, as we learn at King’s, are indicators of the market value of workers’ skills. In an efficient system such as Capitalism, it makes sense that those who are least efficient become dead weight, and the system will naturally shed them in order to increase productivity. Unfortunately this dead weight often takes the form of children with rare bone marrow diseases and elderly men and women whose entire life savings is not enough to cover the cost of kemo.
Given this, while I regard “Obamacare” as you refer to it as a poor solution to the problem. I think it is worth noting that there is a problem, a significant one, and that perhaps we would gain more by participating in creating a solution rather than brow beating those who are.
-Your Reader
I can’t answer your critique of capitalism in a quick reply (though some of your points are anticipated in previous posts), but with regard to your point about “paticipating in creating a solution,” stay tuned. As the beginning of this post indicates, I will give 10 principles for a republican health care policy next week.