The Failure of Authentic Health Care Reform (8/24/16)
The hubris that federal government bureaucrats can micromanage the health care industry is beyond a fatal conceit. The real issue that most of us have is the idea that in a split second we could be forced into filing bankruptcy by a low-probability event. That's the real purpose of insurance. I've paid far more into auto insurance over my lifetime than I've gotten back (and I hope that remains true for the rest of my life).
Somehow the government feels that it has to intervene to "save" us from the free market. The basic idea is if the government gets stuck with the costs, it feels it needs to manage the industry, hence it thinks by mandating certain preventive measures in conjunction with purported economies of scale, it can minimize aggregate costs. It furthermore ensures the efficiency by ensuring standardization of procedures, qualifications of personnel, etc.
I will simply point out that the monopoly State doesn't enable creative destruction and innovation in the competitive marketplace; there are vested interests with stakes in the status quo (including the bureaucracy). Michael Cannon pointed out in a recent Cato Institute podcast, for instance, that insurers had introduced policies that would insure young people against the risk of preexisting conditions--at a fifth or so of the cost of carrying full-fledged insurance policies, which would allow younger people with fewer resources to get the benefits of true insurance. (One would then be allowed to purchase a policy at regular rates if a relevant hardship surfaced.) There were also policies written to be guaranteed renewable (e.g., vs. vendors who might drop you if you developed a costly condition). Cannon pointed out that many of the points that reformers were promising were already available in much of the marketplace already because the market was addressing the underlying consumer preferences; this is much like the fact that purported labor laws (say, child labor or union policies were mostly reinforcing ongoing trends and market realities sparked by the competitive, innovative policies of Ford and other entrepreneurial capitalists). It is not the intent of this segment to outline a free market reform alternative to the status quo, but the interested reader can start with this policy analysis by Cannon.
I recently met a highly competent, personable corporate trainer, a mother and grandmother, maybe a decade short of retirement. (As is my current blog policy, I do not specify names of personal contacts without their knowledge and permission. It is not my intent to violate their privacy or to imply that they share my political view; I'm simply referencing a real-world example relevant to discussion.) Her husband and she were looking forward to a comfortable, well-deserved retirement having raised a family with multiple incomes. Over the past year, their world turned upside down. On a vacation in Texas, her then healthy husband suddenly came down with acute pancreatitis, an often fatal condition. Her husband has since had multiple stays in the ICU (including sepsis, a condition that my own father died from) and surgeries, including removal of a pancreatic cyst and parts of his intestines and colon. (There is a likely future surgery as well; apparently local Florida surgeons are wary of doing it, and the wife has basically exhausted company leave time; she may need to take unpaid leave, not to mention foot the likely hotel bills in TX, etc., to accompany him.)
The company has a decent health care insurer, but she got bad news this week that her husband's doctors, unsatisfied with what the insurer had reimbursed for their services rendered, sent her an invoice for an additional $25K. She's already paying off another medically-related loan. She's openly speculating since they don't have the resources, they might need to consider declaring bankruptcy. Don't get me wrong; she realizes that if her husband had not receive the quality care he got in Texas, she would likely be a widow today. But few people, beyond perhaps the wealthy, have the resources to write a check for $25K; I know I can't. There are also a few things, though, that irked her about the invoice over and beyond the aggregate amount; for example, she noted that the doctors were charging about $500 a shot just for brief casual post-operative visits to look in on him, maybe listening to him cough.
Let me point out that there are complications if one has to file for bankruptcy. For example, if you have a government clearance, financial issues are considered to be a potential vulnerability for foreign adversaries to exploit.
The point I am raising here is how the Democrats have failed at the fundamental job of healthcare reform; it's not just that you have major insurers withdrawing from ObamaCare (there just aren't enough profitable health care risks to offset below-cost insurance for others), but people not only have to pay sky-high prices for insurance but high deductibles and co-pays. In this case, high out of pocket expenses are faced by a household which has paid into insurance and high taxes for decades, and they could face uncertain golden years wiped out by these bills they thought would be covered by insurance.
The Republicans had floated a catastrophic healthcare alternative to HillaryCare some 25 years back. Government policies have often been morally corrupt and unproductive, e.g., the destruction of urban black families. I may have mentioned one of my best friends from UH back in the early 80s. Dr. Tim is an accounting professor in Southern California. (I actually had a campus visit where he teaches, but they declined to make an offer.) He was seriously dating a Latina in the 1990's when she got into an horrific auto accident, leaving her in a wheelchair permanently. They could never get married, because if they did, the state would bleed his assets dry before paying anything for her care. This is just wrong. They could live together without getting married, and the state would pay.
There is something fundamentally wrong with progressive policies that work against traditional marriage and family. We need to liberalize the health care industry from the grasp of the State.
Spoonerisms 8/26/16
While on my current business trip to Florida, I've adjusted to the Jeep SUV I've been driving surprisingly well. But I still find myself plopping down my left foot to set the emergency brake when I leave the vehicle when in fact the brake is set with my right hand to the side. I just know when I get back home to my 15-year GM car, I'll find myself applying Jeep nuances, whether it has to do with operating power windows or my windshield wipers. (In Florida, the weather can change on the dime. It was sunny when I started to drive back from lunch, when all of a sudden the rain pelted down, and my trigger response didn't work on the Jeep. It just took a split second to adjust.)
This process of reversing things is amusing when I catch myself doing them. One time, for example, I caught myself throwing tea bags in the trash vs. tea bag envelopes; I've even retained egg shells, while tossing the egg whites/yolks in the trash. People also sometimes mangle speech in a similar fashion (e.g., fighting a liar vs lighting a fire),
