Conservative-Democrat

It took me a while to finally calm down enough to say a few words about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010.  I think that it is a mistake.  Not a catastrophe, not the end of everything, but a long-term and probably fatal mistake.  It is also a perfect example of everything bad about our form of government.

“Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried.” – Winston Churchill

Democracy in the United States is derived from the people, but it is a balance between private interests, corporate interests, and bureaucratic interests each struggling for control.  Corporate interests are the most obvious, they are looking to control their environment in order to produce profits.  Personal interests are the ideologically minded who wish to control the thoughts and behaviors of others.  The bureaucratic interests are the natural traits within all governments to control everything.

The people are the currency, by appealing to the actions and desires of the citizenry as they pursue happiness the struggle for control is waged.

That being said, the bureaucratic interests have had the advantage though most of history and especially in the western democracies.  Health reform is not about health reform, it has very little to do with patient protection, and nothing to do with affordable health care.  It is about control.  And the government has made a power grab.

Part 1 – The Noble Goal

The goal of affordable heath care is noble; the currently applied means will only lead to disaster.  Let challenge some of the myths and reason out some of the effects.

- Affordable health care is a right. No, it isn’t.  And it can’t be a right.  Rights are based upon personal and group freedoms.  Health care is a service and can be usurped for the common good, like public education, emergency service, and utilities — but it is not a right.

- Health care insurance companies can no longer consider pre-existing conditions. Mostly true.  And all of those insured will pay higher premiums.  The insurance companies are not a governmental agency that can run in the red (at least not yet).

- Health care costs will go down. That has yet to be seen, but why would they.  Was tort reform addressed?  No (but they did include that they think someone should do something).  Were the research and developmental costs structures addressed?  No.  Were the shortages of health care professionals addressed?  A little with loans and more governmental programs. At the same time more regulations, responsibilities, and punishments are place upon health care providers.  The best and the brightest will be reconsidering participating in the health care industry — there is a lot of risk to consider.

Other than mandating that more people participate in health care insurance pools, none of the key factors that address costs were included in a 2000+ page law.  And a new bureaucracy was added…those are relatively cheap.  Right?

- Everyone is insured. This appears to be true (except some lucky Amish), yet passing a law to mandate that everyone get insurance is easy and doesn’t really win many kudos from me.  Shoot, anyone could have thought that one up.

- The bill is revenue neutral. This is one of the most laughable.  Let’s see, we collect taxes for 10 years and only have to payout for 6 years.  And congress still had to cook the books to get that to work (assuming the Student Loan program was one of the ways to do that).

Here are the likely outcomes.

• Health care will attempt to become like a utility, education, or emergency services, however it will fail because those institutions can be contained by geography and the nature of the service.
• Health care costs will grow.  Simply consider some of the reasons given above.  It will also be a negative revenue item in our growing deficit as a country.
• The wealthy will still receive the best care available while the rest of America will experience reduced levels of service.
• A supplemental health care service industry will evolve to allow those who are not satisfied with the public option.
• Companies with abandon the “cadillac” plans much to the dismay of their current employees.  They will also move away from being the primary health care insurance provider.
• Small companies will be even more effected by health care taxes as they choose to hire and expand.  This will increase the cost of doing business and make even more difficult to grow.
• The burden of taxation will increase.  Consider this bill as simply another payroll tax, because that is essentially what it is with the usual “no opt out clause”  (again, unless you are a lucky Amish).

Becoming Amish has never looked more appealing.

- Michael

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