The big lie behind politician-controlled medicine

The Denver Post printed the following letter of mine last week (on-line version):

Re: “Who has your health at heart?” May 22 guest commentary.

AFL-CIO executives John Sweeney and Mike Cerbo perpetuate the big lie behind politician-controlled medicine: that the free market is not working and that costs have been spiraling out of control because of markets.

But costs have been increasing precisely because of the employer-based insurance they espouse, which is a consequence of a biased and non-free-market tax code. It favors employer-based insurance and penalizes other types of medical insurance.

We consume medical care like a business traveler dining on the company’s expense account: Since someone else pays the bill (insurers), patients need not shop around, so providers don’t compete on price. Why?

Tax-discounted insurance encourages us to buy more costly insurance than we probably need, hence penalizing saving for future medical expenses. Our “insurance” has become prepaid health care.

Employer-based insurance also coddles insurance companies, which have little incentive to please consumers. They know we’re essentially locked to our employer and the costly insurance plans they offer. To buy a competitor’s product, we must change jobs or pay a stiff tax penalty.

The AFL-CIO should be ashamed of promoting self-serving policies that both empower labor unions and result in expensive medical care and insurance.

For a way out of this policy mess, see Michael Cannon’s piece on Large HSAs here and here. He compares it with McCain’s plan here.

Politicians guilty for expensive insurance

The Rocky Mountain News published my letter to the editor on Tuesday, May 6 (print scan).

Darla Stuart (Speakout April 22) writes that since “Colorado’s citizens and businesses deserve to know the real cost of the health-care insurance,” politicians should force insurance companies to provide “transparency.” But we really deserve to know how politicians have inflated insurance costs in the first place.

Tax policy encourages employer-based insurance, which essentially chains us to one insurer. Shielded from competition, insurers need not compete on price very much.

State-level bureaucrats succumb to special interests by burdening small-group policies with many benefits we do not need. The Congressional Budget Office reports that such mandated benefits increase premiums by at least six percent [p. 16, 20], and possibly more than ten. It also reports that community rating laws increase premiums by nine percent [p. 16].

What’s becoming increasingly transparent is where allegedly well-intentioned controls like House Bill 1389 will lead: politician-controlled health care and insurance where bureaucrats make decisions that rightfully belong to you and your physician.

Health care reform for nannies

The Rocky Mountain News published my letter to the editor on their site earlier this week:

Politicians shouldn’t force grown-ups to buy insurance

In “Health-care reform for grown-ups” (April 6), the Rocky’s editorial board says “it can live with” mandatory insurance proposed in Senate Bill 217 if “value benefit plans are indeed viable and available at modest costs.” But real grown-ups can’t “live with” politicians treating them like children.

Attempting to justify this nanny-state proposal, the editors perpetuate the fallacy that the “cost-shift from the uninsured” makes insurance so expensive: Such “uncompensated care totals $600 million … according to the blue ribbon commission.” Wrong.

In a January 26 Speakout printed here, Commission member Linda Gorman showed that the Commission’s figure was much less, and that the maximum annual cost-shift was “about $85 per insured individual.” How much will SB 217 cost taxpayers?

Maybe mothers can force their four-year-olds to eat their vegetables, but politicians shouldn’t force grown-ups to buy insurance. As grown-ups, we have the individual right to make that choice ourselves.

Politicians: Sitting on your hands & doing nothing might be an improvement

Yesterday the Denver Post published the following letter to the editor that I submitted. A scan of the print edition is here.

Re: “Health coverage gets new push,” March 28 news story.

Democrats like state Sen. Bob Hagedorn, and state Rep. Anne McGihon want to force us all to buy medical insurance – as they define it. But government-mandated insurance does not guarantee actual care. Consider Canada, England and Massachusetts.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reports that “109 people had a heart attack or suffered heart failure while on the waiting list. Fifty of those patients died.” The BBC reports that “up to 500 heart patients die each year while they wait for potentially life-saving surgery.” The Boston Globe reports that in response to soaring costs, Massachusetts “policymakers could face difficult choices: spend more state money or cut back the two programs by reducing enrollment, cutting subsidies, or eliminating benefits.”

Sen. Hagedorn says it’s “immoral for us to sit on our hands and do nothing.” Hence, instead of passing more laws that kill, politicians should do something that is moral and actually works: repeal laws that make insurance prohibitively expensive.

For example, Colorado House Bill 1327 would allow us to buy insurance plans that meet less damaging regulations of other states. This would make quality, affordable insurance available to thousands of Coloradans.

“For the general good of society”…whatever

The Rocky Mountain News posted my letter in response to this news article about how or if government should force one group of people to buy broadband internet access for another group of people.

Jeff Smith writes that CU law professor Phil Weiser “would like to see public rather than industry funds used to stimulate broadband deployment, arguing that such services are for the general good of society” (March 10). This is journalistic smoke and mirrors.Extending broadband access to rural and remote areas is not a choice between”public” and “industry” funding. Since “the public” both pays taxes and funds industry when buying products, it pays either way. The choice is between voluntary trade and coercion.

Aesop’s fable of the City Mouse and Country Mouse is about trade-offs. If government should force City Mouse to buy broadband internet for Country Mouse, must Country Mouse buy City Mouse therapeutic getaways to the countryside?

If broadband access is for “the general good of society” what isn’t? Since a smelly, dirty, and immobile populace is surely “bad for society,” how about tax subsidies for soap, deodorant, and shoes?

Incidentally, both Phil Weiser and I graduated from Swarthmore College.

One could argue that certain goods are “public goods,” but fast communication and access to information is not one of them. The Wikipedia entry on public goods includes articles skeptical of the concept.

Boulder Daily Camera – critical of Medicaid?

Yesterday the Daily Camera published my comments on Medicaid as part of their Virtual Editorial Board (printed version). They summarize my longer piece on Medicaid. I’m happy to note that among those that wrote in, I was not the only one critical of Medicaid.

Better yet, Dave Humphrey and Shirley Scoville of the “real” editorial advisory board ask excellent questions.

Politically-controlled insurance is a disease

The Rocky Mountain News has published a letter (print version) to the editor I submitted last week:

Healthcare Reform Commission Chair Bill Lindsey’s comments show that he either misunderstands why insurance is so expensive or deliberately misrepresents fundamental issues (“Mandatory health plan participation opposed,” Jan. 10).

He wants to force Coloradans to buy politically-defined insurance because “the market for health insurance isn’t working.” But as my free-market proposal to the Commission explains, it’s not working because government controls have crippled it.

Federal tax policy deeply discounts employer-provided insurance. This locks us to our employer and the costly insurance plans they offer. Hence, insurance companies need not please us, as they know we must change jobs to buy a competitor’s product.

Mandated benefits laws force us to buy expensive policies with benefits we may not need. For example, a widowed wife must buy a policy that covers marital therapy, prostate cancer, and maternity. In Colorado these and other controls add between 20% to over 50% to premium costs.

Politically-controlled medical insurance is a disease masquerading as its own cure.

Free-market “barons” must please customers

Yesterday the Daily Camera printed a letter to the editor of mine in response their Editorial Page Editor’s attacking individual freedom:

The big lie behind government medical care reform

I had a letter to the editor published in the Daily Camera last week, which was also posted on the Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine blog.

We do not have free-market care

“If the market alone could supply the answer, 47 million Americans would not lack health insurance,” stated a Boston Globe editorial supporting of Hillary’s big-government plan (Sept. 21). This implication that America has free-market medical care is the huge deception behind government’s hostile take-over of medicine. Our tax dollars already account for almost half of all medical spending. That’s no free market.

Neither is a tax code that coddles insurance companies. It deeply discounts employer-paid insurance, chaining you to your employers costly non-portable plans. As a captive customer, insurers can afford to mistreat you — changing insurers requires changing jobs.

Tax-discounted insurance also encourages you to buy more comprehensive insurance than you probably need, hence penalizing saving for future medical expenses. With prepaid health care posing as “insurance,” we consume medical care like a business traveler dining on the company’s expense account: Since someone else pays the bill, patients need not shop around, so providers don’t compete on price.

You can also thank government meddling for mandated-benefits laws, which criminalize the purchase of affordable insurance. This is like banning cars that lack features of a Lexus, and calling for more government controls because people cannot afford cars.

Instead of imposing more government meddling, legislators should restore free markets. First repeal the insurance tax exemption and lower taxes commensurately. If that’s not feasible, extend the tax exemption to all medical expenses and insurance by allowing anyone to open a tax-deductible Health Savings Account. The ability to purchase insurance with untaxed HSA deposits would free us from employer-based plans. The Legislature should also repeal mandates and support the Health Care Choice Act, which would allow us to buy insurance that meets less damaging regulations of other states.

Paraphrasing Colorado activist Robert LeFevre, government-controls are a “disease masquerading as its own cure.”

Which parts of Canada’s or Europe’s health care shall we emulate?

That’s what I ask in an eLetter at published in the Denver Post’s website:

Re: “Taking care of our own,” Sept. 6 Pius Kamau column

Dr. Pius Kamau (Opinion, Sept. 5) suggests we “copy those parts of the Canadian and European systems that best suit us.” But which parts?

Surely it’s not timely medical care. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported that in Ontario, “109 people had a heart attack or suffered heart failure while on the waiting list. Fifty of those patients died.”

Perhaps it’s doctors’ working conditions? Yet a former President of the Canadian Medical Association told the New York Times that “physicians across Canada are in an advanced stage of burnout due to work conditions” which “causes them to retire early…or simply leave.”

Or perhaps surviving diseases? But the American Cancer Society reported that “U.S. patients have better survival rates than European patients for most types of cancer.”

History has shown that government-controlled economies fail. Compare thriving West Germany and South Korea to desolate East Germany and North Korea. Medicine is no exemption. As my free-market proposal to the 208 Commission (”FAIR,” at WhoOwnsYou.org) shows, our medical care suffers from too much government interference, not too little. Effective reform requires eliminating government controls that prevent free markets from delivering quality, low-cost medical care — just as they provide other essential goods and services.