In the event that the Supreme Court overturns the Affordable Care Act (which seems distinctly possible given all the “broccoli” talk that went on during the hearings), it might be prudent to discuss why the Obama administration felt the need to tackle the American health care system in the first place.
Simply put, our for-profit, insurance-based health care system was garbage.
There are a quite a few Americans who would disagree with that, but that’s because the system was working for them. They worked for businesses that covered the costs of their comprehensive health care, or they had the largesse available to cover their own. The Supreme Court has never had an issue with their health insurance provider, because they have premier health insurance plans.
The health plan of the U.S. Congress is also first rate. These folks live in a perspective-free bubble, and have absolutely no idea what the average person had to go through in order to get affordable and effective insurance. I would argue that they probably had no real idea how the health insurance market even worked in this country.
You could tell their ignorance based on the arguments they used against health care reform. In the months leading up to the final vote on the ACA, the catchword was “freedom.” Congressman and Senators who were against health care reform couldn’t string a declarative sentence together without the word “freedom” somewhere in there.
Veteran lobbying groups masquerading as grass-roots, mom-and pop advocacy organizations toured the country warning us that “our freedoms are at risk.” One Congressman even carried a “freedom baby” on to the House floor as a completely inexplicable example of how terrible health care reform would be for Americans.
The Pavlovian use of this word might very well have stirred up the patriotism and fear in those of us who didn’t know any better, but for a lot of Americans, our health-care system gave us “freedoms” that were not worth getting misty eyed over.
If you were underinsured or couldn’t afford the Supreme Court Justice/Congressman/Syndicated Talk Show host brand of insurance, you had the “freedom” to choose which insurance company would inevitably reject some, most, or all of your medical bills when you got sick or injured. Once that happened, you had the same “freedom” as the uninsured, which was the freedom to choose between death and financial ruin.
The reason most people didn’t have good insurance or any insurance at all is not because they were lazy or thoughtless, but because it was expensive, often prohibitively so. Costs have been going up sharply over the past decade, and wages have been stagnant for twenty years. This isn’t the sort of economic obstacle that gumption and bootstraps can overcome. Many people who could afford insurance could only afford what turned out to be a coupon full of denials and disclaimers rather than actual coverage, and many people couldn’t even afford that.
Americans who are on the ever-widening economic fringes know all about this. When the right began their hysterical talk of “death panels” and the horrors of government bean-counters roaming the hospitals, millions of Americans with bad health insurance policies recognized this as simply a description of the status quo. Every health insurance company in America has at one time or another decided that it would be more cost effective to simply deny claims for one flimsy reason or another than pay for the treatment of someone who was seriously ill, and if that isn’t a death panel then what is?
Apparently having the government between you and your doctor is unacceptable, but having a profit-minded insurance adjuster in the same position is perfectly ok. Death panels, rescission, lifetime limits, dropping coverage for the flimsiest of reasons and arbitrary denial of claims are all apparently examples of freedom in action provided that there is an unnecessary middleman making money out of the deal.
The goal of hospitals and insurance companies in America is to make a profit for their investors. Practicing medicine and insuring people is simply how they go about making that profit. If you run your hospitals and health insurance companies under the same principles as a factory that makes Blu-Ray players, then inevitably you have to make cuts and sacrifices in order to keep profits up and healthy. Except what inevitably gets cut is insurance coverage and what gets sacrificed are the patients.
The ACA essentially forces insurance companies to stop engaging in their worse practices, and in order to make up for any profits that insurance companies might lose by not engaging in monstrous behavior, it makes everyone in the country buy insurance. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. But since we have decided that healing people without somebody getting rich falls under the category of “blood-soaked, communist tyranny,” this is what we’re stuck with. If the Supreme Court is as clueless about health care as they are about campaign finance, then pretty soon we won’t even have that.
If the ACA goes down, I hope that the conservatives in America take a moment to think about what they are celebrating. It isn’t just about a defeat for Obama. It’s about going back to a health care system that has no business being in a country that so loudly declares itself to be Christian, or even in a country that claims to be civilized. But hey, freedom, freedom, and more freedom, right?
Right.
Adam Dawson has lived and worked in and around Washington, D.C. for most of his life. He does communications work for law firms and advocacy groups and writes freelance contributions for law firms and advocacy groups. He lives right over the Potomac River in Arlington, Virginia.
You can follow him on Twitter @AdamDawson9681
Comments [9]
@Trevor, I had no idea that Aetna, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, United Health Care and Cigna were all departments of the US government. I've lived in the D.C. area for pretty much all of my life and I have never noticed their headquarters anywhere. Are they near the Dept. of Commerce over on Constitution Avenue?
You seem to be confusing a "government monopoly" with "government regulations." If the ACA remains in place (or even if it doesn't) people will still be buying insurance from private insurers. The difference will be that said insurers will no longer be able to rip you off and leave you broke or dead with the carefree impunity that they used to. Unless the ACA is totally shot down. In which case best of luck! To all of us!
The point of my article was not "Capitalism bad! Free market bad!" Start a business. Hell, start two. Make money. Be productive. Kick ass. Take names. Buy a house and a beach house and a yacht and a condo in the city to rent out to people. I do agree with you about working hard. I don't know anybody who desires nothing and therefore does nothing. (I have three jobs.) However, I do know dozens upon dozens upon dozens of people who work incredibly hard and incredibly diligently at all of their professions, yet still got completely hosed by their private, for-profit insurers when they became sick or got injured.
Some things should not be left up to the free market. I know that sounds like blasphemy, but it's true. Do you want a free-market police force? Where they enforce the laws based on your ability to individually pay for the enforcement? One where they wont investigate a murder or a burglary because you were late on your premiums? How about a free market judicial system, where you get the justice that you can afford?
Our police forces and fire departments are not left up to the free market because they quite literally involve matters of life and death. I happen to believe that sickness and injuries are also matters of life and death, and should not be left up to the whims of profit driven corporations. I have no idea why it is that this notion of mine causes such diaper-filling hysteria in so many of our fellow citizens, yet for some reason it does.
I would also argue that when it comes to health care, regular free market principles of competition and consumer choice mean positively diddly. Johnny Liberty Freemarketson buys a health insurance policy. Johnny Liberty Freemarketson gets cancer. Johnny Liberty Freemarketson's insurance company flat out says "We're not gonna pay for that. Sorry. Don't let the door hit your chemo drip on the way out, and thanks for all the money." Johnny Liberty Freemarketson exercises his freedom as a consumer and goes out to find a new health insurance policy, but he can't because he now has a pre-existing condition. Johnny Liberty Freemarketson, RIP or Chapter 11. That isn't the free market. That's a rip off, and a potentially fatal one at that.
@Karol, I would much rather have a single-payer system, like Canada or England or France or Spain or Portugal or Holland or every other western country that has somehow managed to provide health care to its citizens without collapsing into Soviet tyranny. But since we have decided we can't have that, this is the best we can do.
I absolutely don't think this is perfect. And neither do the insurance companies, mainly because while the idea of everyone having to buy insurance is totally their jam, the idea that they will actually have to pay for health care with the money they get from us as opposed to doing their standard selling of a bill of goods does not make them happy at all.
I don't care if your 10% numbers come from Obama or United Health Care or Nikki Minaj. Everybody I know, literally everybody, has been boned by their health insurance provider. Some for a few thousand, some for about ten grand, and some have been forced into bankruptcy, but everyone I know has paid their premiums for years in good faith only to have their coverage either revoked or poked full of enough holes as to be completely meaningless. Why attempting to rectify that particular shameful and sociopathic rip-off causes such teeth grinding and resentment is completely beyond me.
To the best of my knowledge, a Republican did pass a health insurance mandate prior to the Affordable Care Act, and his name was Mitt Romney. I also seem to recall that when he did so, it was met with much head nodding and affirmative sentiment from conservatives everywhere, and was praised as a successful partnership between the government and the free market. I wonder what happened to change everybody's mind?
"There are a quite a few Americans who would disagree with that, but that’s because the system was working for them. "
So...why did we change the entire system for the few (10% by Obama's own estimations) for whom it wasn't working?
"The goal of hospitals and insurance companies in America is to make a profit for their investors. "
Do you not understand that Obamacare just makes them richer? Obamacare forces everyone to buy healthcare...from the existing insurance companies. If a Republican forced through something like this we'd be talking nonstop about "sweetheart" deals. Instead we get articles like this.
I am so tired of those that claim intellectual prowess, yet they are clueless.
This articles seems similar to my college professor who highlighted a few examples pf large corporations with someone at the helm who should have gone to jail for the corruption/ misleading they did running the business. The professor would explain, "corporations are for-profit", "profit encourages greed", "greed is what drove the corruption; therefore, we should all be against the capitalization that results in atrocities. Government is our solution!"
I replied, "Why am I in your classroom? Why do I work nights? Why do I study hard? Why do I give up my weekends where my friends are enjoying their time? Why do I pay these HUGE tuition costs? Isn't because I am GREEDY? Don;t I want more money, a better home, the ability to afford toys and vacations?"
Wow, was my professor an idiot. Capitalism does not cause greed. Greed is part of the human condition. Greed is what motivates more than any other factor, by far. Without greed, nobody works hard.
The real problem that my professor complained about was not greed, it was when a person lies, steals, cheat, or otherwise commits a crime. All of his examples of corporate "greed" were really examples of criminals.
The real question: "What is in place in a capitalist society to address crime as opposed to a centralized government society (his better alternative) to address crime - the real problem.
In a centralized government, there aren't any criminals? People are not influenced by greed? His conclusion was lame and absurd and highlights how little professors are challenged with their ideas.
To truly highlight why a centralized government solution is always worse - guaranteed - takes a lot of time or word which I don;t have here.
I will leave with this, a centralized government is a monopoly. The worst kind of monopoly because those setting the rules also enforce the rules. It is a natural state for a fraud triangle (ready to be abused). All monopolies, over time and without fail, always lead to higher cost, fewer choices, and lower quality. I wish I had the time to prove it here, but it is true.
The Obama plan is a centrally run monopoly that will always lead to higher cost, lower quality, and fewer choices: its an abomination and only the uninformed pseudo intellectuals would support it.
"Obviously some Republicans here have drunk the kool-aid"
The original "kool-aid" drinkers were "progressive" Marxists who were praised and supported by the Democratic Party machine.
This is the worst article I've ever read.
Obviously some Republicans here have drunk the kool-aid - for those of us who haven't or who would like actual evidence (not just opinion) on how bad it was/is:
Dr Margaret Flowers on Bill Moyers:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/02052010/profile3.html
Wendell Potter on Bill Moyers:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07102009/profile.html
6/24/09 Senate Testimony of Wendell Potter:
http://commerce.senate.gov/public/?a=Files.Serve&File_id=6bbaf0e4-b8f2-497d-8a54-88f5be8c4cae
6/24/09 Senate Testimony of Nancy Metcalf
http://commerce.senate.gov/public/?a=Files.Serve&File_id=f5302524-9021-4370-9d32-866473b9e447
6/24/09 Senate Testimony of Karen Pollitz:
http://commerce.senate.gov/public/?a=Files.Serve&File_id=27023dc6-ef58-48e7-a25b-8ea97d089618
Scalia and Thomas Dine with Healthcare
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/14/news/la-pn-scalia-thomas-20111114Senate Record on Healthcare:
http://dpc.senate.gov/docs/fs-111-1-125.html
"I would argue that they probably had no real idea how the health insurance market even worked in this country".
True and nobody in Congress really cares.
The Democrats wanted this because it was a golden opportunity to drastically expand their business which is government with their union controlling it which is called the Democratic Party. The American people would be forever beholden to the welfare state and their party like in Europe where "conservative" politicians come and go but all must genuflect to the welfare state and the statists who lord over it.
How is that working out for them?
The difference is that we have the US Constitution and this administration is doing everything in their power and beyond to undermine it.
And the price of private insurance just keeps rising to the stratosphere. Even the New York State subsidizes "Healthy New York" program is being allowed to increase out of reach. Last year my insurer Oxford was granted a 32.6% increase in premium rates for 2012, and this year they are requesting a 46.5% increase for 2013! By next year at this time I will be paying 25% of my monthly income for health insurance, and by the following year I will be forced to leave Healthy New York because my pension income will have edged up above the eligibility threshold. In other words, in order to qualify for Healthy New York, a household will have to pay at least 25% of its income on health insurance premiums.
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