10 Reasons to Oppose Obamacare, part 2
In Thursday’s daily republican, I highlighted the first five reasons to oppose the President’s health care reforms. Today, the rest of the list….
6. Creating an unnatural right: One of the most pregnant features of the current health care bill is the provision that establishes a right to health insurance. As the first post in this series argued, this turns the logic of rights on its head. A right as a protection from harm is universally enforceable since there is nothing that prevents all people from enjoying it simultaneously. A right to a positive good (like health insurance) cannot be universalized without compelling some people to provide it to another; that is, without conscripting the labor and resources of some in the service of others. As a result, some end up with a right without a corresponding responsibility and others with a responsibility that vastly exceeds the value of the right.
7. More hidden costs: As we’ve argued at a number of points, the demand for health care is artificially increased in our system by the fact that consumers have very little opportunity or incentive to investigate the true cost of treatments and procedures. Neither employer-based private insurance nor public health insurance options provide individuals with any palpable benefit from economizing or any easy way to observe the consequences of their health care decisions. Since these are the core of President Obama’s plan, approving it will only make matters worse in this regard.
8. Possessive politics: While some may find the implied social solidarity comforting, the nationalization of health care will only exacerbate the trend toward an increasingly paternalistic government. As “our seniors” and “our children” becomes “our everyone,” we must recognize that something fundamental to our republican system is being given away. It is in the messy relationships of life within one’s “little platoon” that true care and love is shown, not in the cold comforts of the bureaucratic state.
9. Rationing: The primary reason cited by President Obama for insisting on health care reform now is the link he believes exists between our supposedly unsustainable level of health care spending and our nation’s long-term economic prosperity. The difficulty that he has had is in explaining how providing 48 million people with health insurance and increasing the mandates on private insurance companies will lead to reduced costs. So far, the answer has focused on the savings that will be wrung out of pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, and doctors, who will be forced to accept less for their goods and services by government mandates and its increased purchasing power. There is no way, however, that this will be enough to “bend the curve.” If President Obama’s plan is fully operationalized, the result will be a health care system where both the marginal cost for medical care and the marginal benefit to foregoing care will be, in practical terms, zero. This will create an essentially unlimited demand for care. There will then be only one way to reduce costs: ration care through the sorts of government boards and agencies all nations with socialized medicine use.
10. Stakeholders and social scientists: In less than 2/3 of a year, the Obama administration has institutionalized a way of governing that departs dramatically from our republican tradition. Policy is made by presidentially-appointed czars in cooperation with business and non-profit “stakeholders,” according to the dictates of presidentially-approved social scientists. Congress formally retains its role in the process, but until the health care debate, has generally followed the command that the “time for talking is over.” Who, then, counts in this system? Not the voting and tax-paying public, whose “stake” in what happens to their lives and property is ignored, but those with the right political connections and lobbyists. Once they are “on board,” the ship is ready to sail. And once the ship sails, it is the same group of the well-connected and approved that mans the helm for the sake of their own power and profit.
These, of course, are the short versions of the argument. Most of these points have been much further developed in the dozen or so preceding posts on the topic. Tuesday, we begin to sketch the parameters of a truly republican health care policy.
No related posts.
