The Conservative Case for Single-Payer Health Care

[Aquila]

I was reading through some older articles on health care in American when I stumbled across this article/post. I thought it made some interesting points. I'll share it here. Please share your thoughts:

The Conservative Case for Single-Payer Health Care
http://hurryupharry.org/2012/06/16/t...r-health-care/

Guest Post, June 16th 2012, 6:08 pm


Guest post by Andrew Murphy


On the surface, the title of this article seems paradoxical. How can any conservative in the USA even contemplate the concept of the government creating a single-payer health insurance system covering all Americans and, in effect, ending private major medical health insurance?

In this post I hope to make the conservative case for a single payer incontrovertible for those occupying the centre-right politically.

Conservatives are supposed to be the defenders of business. Yet our current health care system works as an albatross around the neck of American business. Likewise, the piecemeal reforms of ObamaCare seem only to make some problems even worse. Hence it is only a matter of time before a single-payer becomes inevitable in this country. Therefore conservatives need to position themselves and come to terms with this eventual reality. And if history is a judge, many times it takes, say, a Nixon to go to China or a Clinton to do welfare reform. A Republican president may be the one who puts single-payer in place down the road.

The case for a single payer from a centre-right perspective is as follows:

The current burden on American corporations

According to the US Chamber of Commerce, group health insurance is the single most expensive benefit offered to employees. General Motors’ cost alone to offer health insurance yearly to employees is $5 billion dollars. To put it in perspective, health care insurance alone, adds $1,500-$2,000 to the price of each car that comes off the assembly line.

A RAND study from 2009 found that companies with higher levels of participation in employee health insurance benefits had much slower economic growth then those companies and industries which had lower health insurance costs or participation to deal with.

Let’s face it, health insurance is a drag on American competitiveness. Every major trading partner of the United States has some form of government-organized health care, so why do we continue to saddle American corporations like working donkeys with such expensive costs?

The burden to entrepreneurship

Americans pride ourselves on being the land of opportunity and of Horatio Alger. Yet the truth is social democratic Denmark now has higher levels of entrepreneurship than the USA. One primary difference between a Danish entrepreneur and his/her American counterpart is health care. Because of universal health care, a Danish worker with health problems can strike out on their own anytime and start up a business. Americans with health problems have to weigh the cost and benefit of leaving their jobs and decide if they can afford or even qualify for an individual health insurance policy.

Americans are more and more making working decisions based on health insurance. According to the Census Bureau, over 78 percent of all small business have no employees. Thus entrepreneurs in America are more likely to have to buy individual health insurance policies, which are usually more expensive and difficult to obtain than group health insurance.

The freest economy in the world has national health care

It is no secret conservatives and libertarians in the USA ♥ Hong Kong. After all HK has Ricardian free trade, low levels of regulations, no capital gains tax and an individual flat tax. Every year when the Heritage Foundation releases its Index of Economic Freedom, HK always tops the list.

However, HK has a dirty little secret. It has a very good national health care system. HK citizens have some of the highest life expectancies in the world but their government health care system only costs about three percent of their GDP to operate (a sharp contrast to the 20 percent of GDP that USA health care costs are expected to be in the next decade).

The point of the HK example is that this beacon of capitalism manages to operate the freest economy in the world while offering and providing a British-style national health service. if one listens to rightwing shock radio or the rhetoric of the Tea Party, it is impossible for that to happen. After all government health care would turn America into a giant Gulag Archipelago.

American conservatives are free to believe that a single-payer system in America will lead to a road to serfdom. Just don’t tell the citizens of Hong Kong, OK? You may embarrass yourself.

Happier workers for business owners

In many areas of America, words like “free trade” and “globalization” are fighting words. Blue collar America lives everyday with the worry that they will show up at work and find a sign saying, “Moved to China: See ya, Don’t want to be ya.”

Those workers are then left to scramble to find a job, usually for less pay and lesser benefits. In the meantime they go on unemployment insurance and hope they can pay their COBRA premiums with their unemployment pay and their spouse’s salary. (COBRA allows Americans to keep their former employer-offered health insurance if they pay the full cost once they leave the company. Typically, employers pay 50% of an employees health insurance premiums.)

Let’s contrast this to the Danish workforce again. When leftwing journalist Bob Kuttner traveled to Denmark, he discovered something very interesting (and probably fascinating since Kuttner is an advocate of managed trade). What he found was the Danish labor movement is completely at ease with free trade and globalization. Part of this is because of Denmark’s very proactive labor retraining policies; but some of it has to do with the fact that a Danish worker’s health care is not tied to their employment. So if a Danish worker’s job is outsourced to Poland, at least some of the pain is mitigated by not having to worry about losing health insurance.

If conservatives would like to take the teeth out of the American labor movement, what better way than to eliminated their fears about free trade and the free market by supporting a single-payer?

If it’s good enough for Margret Thatcher…

The name Margaret Thatcher is said with much reverence in the USA by conservatives, almost with the same love as for Ronald Reagan. Yet Lady Thatcher always supported Britain’s National Health Service(NHS). In 1983, for example, as she geared up for her re-election campaign, Thatcher said, “The NHS is safe in our hands.”

Rather ironic that if Lady Thatcher were to change citizenship, move to the USA and try and run for office as a Republican, she probably could not win a GOP primary. She would be denounced as a crypto-commie by Tea Party activists for having once supported “socialized health care.”

Thatcher– much like the other iconic conservative statesmen of the 20th century in Europe, from Winston Churchill to Konrad Adenauer to Ludwig Erhard to Charles DeGaulle– made peace with her country’s universal health care system. It is only in America where making peace with such an arrangement would be considered, “socialism” or “Marxism”.

The current system is unsustainable, a single-payer system is coming– it’s only a matter of time. Conservatives forget that health care is not an example of a perfect market. It is not the same as shopping for a car, choosing an airline or deciding which brand of cereal to buy. Health care is the quintessential example of information asymmetry (PDF).

If conservatives and Republicans can’t talk about these things, they will cede the issue to liberals and Democrats.

[Disciple4life]

I find a few problems with this article. Before starting let me tell you how I see our current system before I tell you how we can fix it.

I believe in less help from the government. Government has regulated every industry. Everything from the auto industry to the sugar industry. This is what has led to jobs leaving the United States.

I bet businesses would like a single payer plan. One less expense for them. Who ever wrote this article is lobbying your vote for a bailout of the American economy. The way I see it is I am tired of politicians and lobbyist making back door deals while the rest of us pay for it.

One of the reasons for medical care and insurance going up is the cost of insurance for doctors. The doctor is not going to eat this cost he just raises his prices. So do the hospitals and everybody else. A person can sue a doctor. It does not matter if the doctor did anything wrong. It is cheaper for his insurance company to pay a small settlement (this could be $10,000 to $100,000) than to go to court and pay for a $500,000 defense. People know this and scam the system.

The countries that are mentioned in the article do not have a surplus of illegal aliens that flood through their border who use their health care system. We do! Anybody can go to the hospital and they can not be turned away.

So what solutions could we come up with.

First, if somebody sues a person, doctor, company and they lose the suit, they have to pay the defendants legal cost. No matter how much it is. This will drop frivolous law suits real fast. People who scam the system will think twice before gambling their future.

Second, we have to do something about immigration. It is not fair for me to work my whole life and pay taxes and them let someone cross the border use our hospitals and then go home. Actually we can not afford to give anything to people who are not U.S. citizens. You want to work live, work and contribute. Fine come on in. You want to mooch off of tax dollars and work under the table. No, go home.

Third, let insurance companies cross state borders. Now we can't buy insurance in another state. This is what has led to the increase of insurance. Let's start deregulating the health insurance industry.

Finally, if the government wants to sell insurance go ahead. I really don't care. BUT do not make me pay for it. If I have to pay for my neighbor's health bills then I get to tell him what he eats, drinks, smokes. I can tell him how much to exercise and how much to weigh.

Do you want the government to tell you what to do? I don't! I want the government to stop micromanaging my life. Period

[Carl]

Sure, the current system is not sustainable just as SS, Medicare & Medicaid are not sustainable long-term. The per capita cost for healthcare in this country is several thousand dollars. This is unaffordable for most families. Obamacare does not fix the problems but does get us closer to single payer.

[Disciple4life]

So I made a lot of arguments for what needs to be fixed. If the government is going to run a program, everybody wants it to run smoothly without waste.

Two things make people mad about the Affordable Health Care Act.

1. Despite all the protest against it, politicians passed it anyway.

2. Citizens will be penalized for not having insurance. If I don't want insurance I should not have to buy it. We should be free to live and breath without be taxed or penalized from the government.

[Aquila]

Originally Posted by Disciple4life

So I made a lot of arguments for what needs to be fixed. If the government is going to run a program, everybody wants it to run smoothly without waste.

Two things make people mad about the Affordable Health Care Act.

1. Despite all the protest against it, politicians passed it anyway.

True, they needed to look like they were doing something to reform the system.

2. Citizens will be penalized for not having insurance. If I don't want insurance I should not have to buy it. We should be free to live and breath without be taxed or penalized from the government.

Here's the rub here. If someone doesn't have a need for health insurance and something unforeseen happens and they find themselves rushing to the hospital and incurring massive bills... they can't pay the bill. Then the providers make up for this by raising the cost of treatment. Then to cover this, insurance providers raise premiums. So, essentially, our premiums are as high as they are primarily because of the uninsured. Remember thousands upon thousands rush to the hospital every day without insurance. Hospitals and other providers pass this loss down to us through raising the costs for treatment. Sadly, as the cost of treatment increases, so do premiums. And as premiums increase, so does the number of people who can't afford insurance... and so we have even more opting out of buying insurance and so we increase the number of the uninsured. And... the cycle begins again in what appears to be an endless cycle of increasing health care costs.

If someone really wants free market health care... and they don't want insurance... they should be turned away when seeking treatment. This prevents them from causing us all to the shoulder their debt. Also, what "free market" service can you get if you don't have money to pay for it??? Obviously if the service is rendered universally... it has to be funded universally.

So... the only other route is to insure everyone and have everyone pay something into the system.

Administrative costs, malpractice insurance, etc. are not inflating premiums as much as the uninsured. Bringing down administrative costs and the cost of malpractice insurance would "help" reduce costs in the short term... but it's not going to stabilize the steady rise in health care costs over the long term.

[Disciple4life]

Single payer system? OH that's right I am the only one paying for everybody else's health care. I am the single payer!!!

[Aquila]

Originally Posted by Disciple4life

Single payer system? OH that's right I am the only one paying for everybody else's health care. I am the single payer!!!

LOL!

[Disciple4life]

We are going to have universal health care. It will not get repealed. Yeah I know we are stuck with it. But just like social security and all the other programs it will have tons of waste and the problems might get better but they will never truly be fixed.

Let me know if you ever get one dime from social security. Too many people are scamming the system. This will happen with health care. The people who work will hardly ever use it, while the person that refuses to work will be at the hospital every single day. You know this is going to happen.

Every job I have ever had this happens. Someone says why don't we all go in on a pizza. I say sure and give $5. Bill gives $5. Sue gives $5. Jake gives a quarter but says that next time he will take care of us and Andrew says he forgot his wallet at home. Everybody feels bad so they tell Jake and Andrew not to worry about it.
What happens next. The pizza comes and there are 8 slices. Jake and Andrew both have 3 slices apiece. Sue and Bill each get one piece. I get to the lunch room a little late because I am still working. I get no PIZZA! Not one slice.

[Aquila]

This is health care. If we are going to have a "free market" approach we need to have a free market philosophy. Unless a person is insured, they should pay cold hard cash up front. If they can't... DENY health services. Now, that's a "free market" approach.

Imagine a car dealership selling cars the way we run our free market health care today. If someone needs a car, they show up. They have no financing and they don't qualify. So, the dealer gives them a car and bills them. Then they don't pay the bill for the car. Eventually the cost of every car on that lot is going to skyrocket as the dealer passes down their losses. Eventually, fewer can afford the car upfront. So, he gives out more cars and bills more and more people. The price will rise until virtually nobody can afford a car. lol

So, we've NEVER really ran health care like a free market product. The ER has always been open to anyone even if they don't have the money. So... if it's open to serve society universally... it needs to be paid for universally. EVERYONE should be required to pay SOMETHING into the system. They only way this is possible is if we have a universal health care system. Now... I don't like Obama's plan. Essentially it's GOVERNMENT forcing you to buy a health insurance from a private provider. And it's far more expensive than he bargained for. Instead, they should expand Medicare and have everyone pay into the system for a single universal program. Sure, the health insurance companies will be outraged. But hey... they are gauging us and using GOVERNMENT to force us to buy their product. That should be illegal. We pay into the system to repair roads and to protect the streets. Everyone benefits from the services in one way or another. I see health care the same way. If it's truly open to all... it needs to be universal. We're Americans. Whatever Canada and Europe does... we can do BETTER. We could create a universal single payer health insurance program that is superior to Canada's and Europe's. The question is... when will we either say enough is enough... and go for it? Or... when will we truly embrace a "free market" system and deny services at the door if people can't afford them? Those are the only two ways to stabilize the rising costs.

Government should have the power to pass various bills involving taxation. However, the government shouldn't be able to FORCE you to buy a private policy. So, in my mind... a single payer system is the only system that is truly ethical and financially feasible seeing that we rarely, if ever, deny ER services to anyone.

[Disciple4life]

I totally get where you are coming from. I don't want to take away roads or libraries of Medicare. But my point is that it will not stop with health insurance. Next it will be food, housing and college education. Just wait it is coming.

You don't want people to pay for people to eat healthy nutritious food with your tax dollars?

You don't think it is a right for every person to have a safe place to live?

You don't think it is the governments place to give everyone a free college education?

The media and society will demonize anyone who refuses to go along with the new plan.

Why don't we look oversees. They have tried some of this stuff and it didn't work.

We can do it better!?! Kind of like paying to police the world with blood and treasure while everyone else reaps the benefits.

One last point and I will stop ranting.

You don't work you don't get health coverage.