Some of you may have come across this Facebook status in some form or another yesterday:
No one should die because they cannot afford health care. No one should go broke because they get sick, and no one should be tied to a job because of a pre-existing condition. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day.
How do freedom-lovers like us respond to that kind of statement? Surely none of us would want people to die simply because they lack wealth or had the bad luck of having a pre-existing condition.
John Thorlin at The New Madisonian offers a good answer (after the jump). I suggest that we respond with our own viral Facebook status. Anyone have any good suggestions?
Thorlin cites the "forgotten man," the one who is forced (against his will) to provide welfare for each other.
What people who subscribe to that statement really believe is that "Someone should pay so that no one will die because they cannot afford healthcare." That "someone" is the forgotten man Amity Shlaes spoke of -- the person who is being forced to provide healthcare, whether it's a doctor with a gun to his head or a productive citizen being targeted for more tax money.
Absolutely right. Besides the fact that the current reforms won't actually improve the cost and quality of health care, the fact that it coerces others into providing welfare is a big no-no.
We could take each sentence and offer a kind of solution? Like this maybe?
No government intervention should cause anyone to die due to inflated healthcare costs. No healthcare charity should be made illegal by the government. The government should never raise healthcare costs for individuals by creating regulations that force people to get insurance strictly through their work place. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day.
No one should be forced to suffer from government intervention in the healthcare industry which raises costs. No one should be tied to a job because of government intervention in the health insurance industry. Government cannot make man well, but it can make him ill. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day.
done
One thing I will say as one who is in graduate school to become a health care professional & works in the health care sector, we need reform. The current system is a mess. We will need some reforms that some may not agree with just because the current system is terrible. Getting rid of pre-existing condition clauses would be one of those reforms. Undoubtedly they will have to pay higher premiums, but some form of insurance is better than none. I feel it to be immoral, given our current employer-based system combined with this economic crisis, to deny people health care because they lost their jobs & came down with an illness. The government created both of these problems through failed policy. We need to move towards consumer-based health care insurance (and also insurance that behaves like actual insurance, not a benefits package).
Also, no one is dying because they dont have health care because we have laws that treat everyone who comes to the ER. Also, a government-run program will not be any different (in terms of denying care) from the insurance companies. Both ration & both have "death panels." It is because they act as benefits packages, they simply cannot provide for every bit of health care. Insurance is a hedge against a risk. Everyone should have high-deductible insurance policies (which cover everything once the deductible is met) combined with tax-free Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). This will give more freedom to patients to make health care decisions with their doctors, it will create price transparency, it will lower the costs of health care procedures & will improve the overall quality of care (while keeping intact what is already great about our health care system).
"No one should go thirsty because they cannot afford beer, and no one should go broke because good beer is so expensive. If you agree, post this as your status."
I have a good fresh joke for you! What makes a bowling alley so quiet? You can hear a pin drop.
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Very good article. I was recently blogging on The Netflix Prize, which deals with the quality of the recommendation. However, conclusions are drawn primarily off of user ratings. People don't seem to bother rating on facebook, I know I don't. I wonder what correlations exist there.
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