That's Where the Money Is
Geezers beware Obamacare.

By Thomas Sowell

When famed bank robber Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks, he said: "Because that's where the money is."

For the same reason, it is as predictable as the sunrise that medical care for the elderly will be cut back under a government-controlled medical system. Because that's where the money is.

My experience is probably not very different from that of many other people in their seventies. My medical expenses in the past year have been more than in the first 40 years of my life -- and I did not spend one night in a hospital all last year or go to an emergency room even once.

Just the ordinary medical expenses of keeping an old geezer going along in good health are high. Throw in a medical emergency or two, and the costs go through the roof.

So long as my insurance company and I are paying for it, it is nobody else's business what my medical expenses are. But once the government is involved, everything is its business.

It is not just a question of what the government will pay for. The logic of collectivist thinking -- and the actual practice in some countries with government-controlled health care -- is that you cannot pay for any medical treatments with your own money if the powers that be decide that "society" cannot let its resources be used that way, or that it would not be "social justice" for some people to have medical treatments that others cannot get, just because some people "happen to have money."

The medical-care stampede is about much more than medical care, important as that is. It is part of a whole mindset of many on the left who have never reconciled themselves to an economic system in which how much people can draw from the resources of the nation depends on how much they have contributed to those resources.

Despite the cleverness of phrases about people who "happen to have money," very few people just happen to have money. Most people earned their money by supplying other people with goods or services that those people were willing to pay for.

Since it is their own money that they have earned, these people feel free to spend it to give their 80-year-old grandmother another year or two of life, or to pay for a hip-replacement operation for their mom or dad, even if some medical "ethicist" might say that the resources of "society" would be better used to allow some 20-year-old to talk over his angst with a shrink.

Barack Obama has talked about the high costs of taking care of elderly or chronically ill patients in terms of "society making those decisions." But a world in which individuals make their own trade-offs with their own money is fundamentally different from a world where third parties take those decisions out of their hands and impose their own notions of what is best for "society."

Calling these arbitrary notions "ethics" doesn't change anything, however effective it may be as political spin.

More is at stake than the outcomes of medical decisions, extremely important as those are. What is also at stake is freedom and the dignity of individuals who do not live their lives as supplicants of puffed-up power holders who are spending the money taken from them in taxes.

One of the many phony arguments for government-controlled medical care is that Americans do not have any longer life expectancy than people in many other countries, despite much higher medical expenditures.

This argument is phony because longevity depends on health -- and "health care" and "medical care" are not the same, no matter how many times the two are confused in the media or in politics. Health care includes things that doctors cannot do much about.

Homicide affects your longevity, but there is not much that doctors can do about it when they arrive on the scene after you have been shot through the heart, except fill out the paperwork. Rates of homicide, obesity, and narcotics usage are higher here than in many other countries, reducing our longevity.

But in the things that medical care can do something about -- like cancer survival rates -- the United States ranks at or near the top in the world. But that can change if we give up the real benefits of a top-flight medical system for the visions and rhetoric of politicians.

An estimated 22,000 americans die each year due to lack of adeqaute healthcare coverage! That's about 60 americans every day! Many of those americans had insurance. Insurance companies find insidious ways to deny health insurance altogether. Something to think about! By not supporting a Health Care Reform that all americans have adequate affordable healthcare, you literally hold the power of life or death!

would the changes proposed STOP those people from dying? Where is your proof? Another red herring from the left. And strictly designed to tug on the emotions.

Yes, it would certainly stop many from dying. They would see doctors and seek medical advice before its too late. How many don't go for annual check up, mammogram, colonoscopy etc.. and if they go see a doctor and are diagnosed with a deadly or chronic disease, they simply don't have the money or if they do have insurance, deductibles are too high or insurance coverage for treatments are denied. FYI It is not a red herring, do your research and you will find out an estimated 20,000 americans die every year. Just Google "How many americans die due to lack of healthcare"! The numbers are there!

or putting govt bureaucracies in charge of health delivery, or taxing businesses and individuals to death

some very simple and cost-effective reforms and communication would likely take care of most of this

others are probably simply unpreventable no matter what is done

"Its' a small percentage of americans; not worth overhauling the whole system"
Savings 20,000 americans lives every year is not worth it??? It is approximately 6-7 times - 9/11 and 2 countries were attacked costing billions! Where's the compassion for your fellow americans?

that government is best suited to allocate scarce health care resources? If so, why?

And spare us the lecture on compassion. It's been proven that conservatives give more to charities, both in absolute dollars and as a percentage of income, than liberals.

It would be like turning the entire auto industry over to the government because Chrysler turned out some faulty engines that blew up and killed people

do cost-effective, focused things to correct the problem and you have my full support. do stupid, wasteful things that cause worse and more widespread problems than the original problem and I will resist

Did you read the article? It is inevitable that rationing will eventually happen. Maybe not in an open advertised form but it will anytime you have bean counters making medical decisions. Just look at Britain and Canada. how many people die there each day waiting on treatment or being denied treatment? So the answer to the other poster's question... no gov options will not stop these deaths.

Britain and Canada are not denied treatments! They might have some wait for elective surgery but are never denied for life threatening treatments. That is BS from the politicians. How many americans die each day in the US waiting for treatments or getting the wrong treatments. How many die each day because they don't have the resources to seek medical help? How many billions is spend on malpractice? Did you ever live in Canada or England? I bet not... so how would you know!

"Did you ever live in Canada or England? I bet not... so how would you know! "


question is - DID YOU?

YES!!!

Somewhere in America Alone, Mark Steyn cites an example of the logical reductio of socialized health care: "the ten-month wait for the maternity ward." He's been adding to the file ever since. Here's the latest entry, from Hamilton, Ontario:

"Hamilton's neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) was full when Ava Isabella Stinson was born 14 weeks premature at St. Joseph's Hospital Thursday at 12:24 p.m.

A provincewide search for an open NICU bed came up empty, leaving no choice but to send the two-pound, four-ounce preemie to Buffalo that evening.

Well, it would be unreasonable to expect Hamilton, a city of half-a-million people just down the road from Canada's largest city (Greater Toronto Area, 5.5 million) in the most densely populated part of Canada's most populous province (Ontario, 13 million people) to be able to offer the same level of neonatal care as Buffalo, a post-industrial ruin in steep population decline for half a century.

But wait! The fun and games are only just beginning. When a decrepit and incompetent Canadian health bureaucracy meets a boneheaded and inhuman American border "security" bureaucracy, you'll be getting a birth experience you'll treasure forever:

Her parents, Natalie Paquette and Richard Stinson, couldn't follow their baby because as of June 1, a passport is required to cross the border into the United States. They're having to approve medical procedures over the phone and are terrified something will happen to their baby before they get there.

Once Buffalo enjoys the benefits of Hamilton-level health care, I wonder where Ontario will be shipping the preemies to. Costa Rica?"

in fact more living relatives there than in the US at present

they make jokes about their health care system as they try not to think about how horrendously expensive it is and how the access to primary care physicians (not only specialists) has declined. they all have stories about waiting months to see specialists or to schedule treatments for all but absolute life-threatening maladies. A pregnant cousin (in urban Ontario, not some rural province) was not able to see an ob-gyn in her first trimester at all.

some carry private insurance. several have come to the us for fairly routine procedures (e.g. oral surgery) they would have had to wait a year for otherwise...


they say it is far easier to get immediate and quality care for their pets and livestock than for themselves..

I also have a few relatives and friends in different provinces of Canada and none of them experienced what you are talking about. From heart attack to cancer to diabetes to pregnancy, they had top notch healthcare and they never feared about going bankrupcy because they got sick. No healthcare is perfect, they are flaws but having the choice I would certainly opt for a gov run healthcare system ansd some control over the drug and insurance abuse in the US.

most americans do not want a federal takeover of either health care delivery or payment. they've seen what federal bureaucracies produce: inefficiency, high cost, waste, poor service, lack of accountability, etc

and most Americans have not experienced any abuse at the hand of health insurance companies. They've heard anecdotal evidence of this from newspaper reports, some of which at least are totally fictitious.

Covering the uninsured, managing cost and combatting insurance company "abuse" is worthwhile, but doesn't require a complete overhaul much less handing over health care delivery or management to the federal government. That would be like paving over your front yard because there is crabgrass in one corner..

should we spend trillions and have the federal government take over traffic control?

Is There a "Right" to Health Care?
By Theodore Dalrymple


If there is a right to health care, someone has the duty to provide it. Inevitably, that "someone" is the government. Concrete benefits in pursuance of abstract rights, however, can be provided by the government only by constant coercion.

People sometimes argue in favor of a universal human right to health care by saying that health care is different from all other human goods or products. It is supposedly an important precondition of life itself. This is wrong: There are several other, much more important preconditions of human existence, such as food, shelter and clothing.

Everyone agrees that hunger is a bad thing (as is overeating), but few suppose there is a right to a healthy, balanced diet, or that if there was, the federal government would be the best at providing and distributing it to each and every American.

Where does the right to health care come from? Did it exist in, say, 250 B.C., or in A.D. 1750? If it did, how was it that our ancestors, who were no less intelligent than we, failed completely to notice it?

If, on the other hand, the right to health care did not exist in those benighted days, how did it come into existence, and how did we come to recognize it once it did?

When the supposed right to health care is widely recognized, as in the United Kingdom, it tends to reduce moral imagination. Whenever I deny the existence of a right to health care to a Briton who asserts it, he replies, "So you think it is all right for people to be left to die in the street?"

When I then ask my interlocutor whether he can think of any reason why people should not be left to die in the street, other than that they have a right to health care, he is generally reduced to silence. He cannot think of one.

Moreover, the right to grant is also the right to deny. And in times of economic stringency, when the first call on public expenditure is the payment of the salaries and pensions of health-care staff, we can rely with absolute confidence on the capacity of government sophists to find good reasons for doing bad things.

The question of health care is not one of rights but of how best in practice to organize it. America is certainly not a perfect model in this regard. But neither is Britain, where a universal right to health care has been recognized longest in the Western world.

Not coincidentally, the U.K. is by far the most unpleasant country in which to be ill in the Western world. Even Greeks living in Britain return home for medical treatment if they are physically able to do so.

The government-run health-care system -- which in the U.K. is believed to be the necessary institutional corollary to an inalienable right to health care -- has pauperized the entire population. This is not to say that in every last case the treatment is bad: A pauper may be well or badly treated, according to the inclination, temperament and abilities of those providing the treatment. But a pauper must accept what he is given.

Universality is closely allied as an ideal, ideologically, to that of equality. But equality is not desirable in itself. To provide everyone with the same bad quality of care would satisfy the demand for equality. (Not coincidentally, British survival rates for cancer and heart disease are much below those of other European countries, where patients need to make at least some payment for their care.)

In any case, the universality of government health care in pursuance of the abstract right to it in Britain has not ensured equality. After 60 years of universal health care, free at the point of usage and funded by taxation, inequalities between the richest and poorest sections of the population have not been reduced. But Britain does have the dirtiest, most broken-down hospitals in Europe.

There is no right to health care -- any more than there is a right to chicken Kiev every second Thursday of the month.

Source: WSJ

"By not supporting a Health Care Reform that all americans have adequate affordable healthcare, you literally hold the power of life or death!"

And you would prefer to have that power in the hands of the same government that even your own Barney Frank tells you not to trust?

Does something need to be done? Probably, but to rush to something because mr. o says so is foolish.

Well it is the same government that takes my tax money to pay for your kids until they finish high school. People who don't want any kids or don't have any kids why should they pay for them? Same government that controls medicare, the army, navy, police force, firemen,libraries. Why is it that criminals are provided free legals advice, free room and board, free medical attention and sick law abiding americans cannot have healthcare if they can't afford it? Something is fundamentaly wrong in a society when its all about
ME ME ME and I don't care as long as I'm okay attitude.

when citizens are so wholly dependent on government

and stop the "can't get medical care" canard. the poor qualify for medicaid and the uninsured can't be turned away from hospital care

the health care "crisis" in this country is grossly exaggerated for political reasons


there's a relatively small number of people in this country who need protection from expenses associated with chronic or catastrophic illnesses. there's much better ways to handle that then turning health care over to a government bureaucracy and taxing the hell out of us for the rationed care that results from that approach

The "can't get medical" canard is true for many americans. Of course if you have an emergency, hospital are not suppose to turn you away, but hold on a minute if you are diagnosed with a chronic disease or cancer, many are refused treatments such as chemotherapy. Ex: A 28 year old woman working as a cashier making $8.50 an hour is diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She dosn't earn enough money to pay for insurance and earns too much money to qualify for medicaid, so this young woman is not able to get chemotherapy to save her life unless a good samaritain comes to her rescue she will die! That's a true story and sadly it is the story for millions of americans.

I doubt it. Besides, many cancer treatment centers - e.g. St Jude's in Memphis - treat the indigent free of charge

But even if that were true the solution is not to turn health care insurance delivery over to the federal government

there are dozens of stories about life under nationalized health care in Canada, England, Ireland: waiting lists for doctors, unavailability of hospital beds, denial of meds, treatments and surgical procedures - and not just for the poor, for everyone

through Medicaid and SCHIP. However, if you believe health care is a God-given right, the fundamental question remains: who best to allocate the resource?

BTW, your tax dollars weren't used to pay for my kids' education. I paid for that.

I wasn't talking specifically about YOUR kids, it was towards all americans kids until they graduate from high school. Who do think pays for the school taxes???

I got your point the first time.

You were making the case that since all of us pay for public schools, why not health care? After all, it's for the common good. Come to think of it, the failure of our public school system is a good example of precisely why we should NOT turn health care over to the government. Government fails at just about every enterprise it undertakes.

There are market-based reforms that, IMO, would be much more effective than Obamacare. Capitalism -- alllocating by price as we do with food, shelter, clothing, and other goods and servies -- is a much more effective means of rationing resources than doing so by government fiat. The individual is closer to the transaction and better able to assess the costs and benefits of a medical procedure, with the help of his or her doctor, than is some government bureaucrat. And each individual will assess the costs and benefits differently, as they place different values on health care. That's why some people smoke and overeat, while others are careful with their diet and exercise religously. (Likewise, some people value a private school education over a public, while others don't believe the benefits are worth the costs.) In contrast, the bureaucrat makes his decision based on the medical procedure or service having the same value to similar people.

Here are two good articles with some interesting ideas:


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124536722522229323.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204251404574342170072865070.html

education, police, fire, military/defense services etc benefit all members of society generally even if not directly. those services cannot rationally be obtained and delivered (only) to individuals. health care, except in the case of disease control (e.g. cdc) is not analogous.

i.e. it's not at all clear that society as a whole benefits from you having cancer treatment or a hip replacement, or that members of the community should ante up for it

60 americans die every day...now that is more than foolish that's a crime!

should we turn traffic control over to the federal government (and raise taxes) to counter this "broken" system?

Life expectancy reaches all-time high in U.S.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32477402/ns/health-aging

And this even came from MSNBC.

0.006 percent of the population versus 99.994 percent who do not die because of your (sourceless) data. That's a pretty good coverage.

In your mind, if 99.994% is too low, then what should it be? Note: 100% is just not possible. What is the increas in cost for each 0.001% that you cover? How can you be sure that the changes will not increase that number (the 0.006%)?