Prepare For Obamacare: Practice Self-Care
posted by Josiah Garber on June 9, 2010
in Health
by Bill Sardi
Question from an LR reader: “I want to ask you what you would prescribe for the US health care system? How much government should be involved, if at all? “What kind of health care system do you think would be the best for our nation?”
Reply:
1. All health insurance plans promote irresponsibility. People just run to the doctor and believe their doctor is responsible for keeping them healthy, not themselves.
2. Health insurance is a ponzi scheme, with the young and healthy paying for the old and chronically ill and those with poor health habits, though I should add that smokers actually cost insurance plans less money over the long haul since they die sooner.
3. With a large pool of money available, the insurance pot gets raided and doctors and hospitals overcharge since there is no market control. There is nothing the plan won’t pay for, no matter how expensive, because the desperate public will demand it. You learn your mother has breast cancer. You will stop at nothing to see she gets the most advanced care, and the more her disease progresses, the more you will demand something be done, even unproven treatment.
4. High-tech care caused Americans to falsely believe their healthcare system is the best in the world, and they want more of it. Fancy imaging technology (cat scans, MRIs), unproven but less invasive particle beam radiation treatment, robotic surgery – all are in huge public demand. A Rand Corporation study showed high-technology is the main driver in the high cost of health care.
We are living a fantasy to believe American government can provide all the high-tech medical care that is available (example: latest New York Times article suggests $5000 disease gene testing for all).
5. About 85% of Americans have health insurance. To provide insurance to the remaining population, largely illegal immigrants, places financial and manpower strains on the delivery of health care that the industry is not prepared for. It was Winston Churchill who said: “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.”
6. Because other countries provide universal health insurance is only to say the bills are paid. This represents provision (welfare) for doctors and hospitals. The system rewards treatment, not cure. Modern medicine has substituted markers of poor health, such as cholesterol, PSA, blood pressure, rather than true end points, such as survival or being drug free.
While many Americans envy countries that offer universal health care, most universal health care plans will soon fail. The National Health Service in Britain is about to implode.
Obamacare is a Devastating Tax on the Poor and Uninsured
posted by Josiah Garber on December 21, 2009
in Economics, Health, Politics
Mises Daily: Thursday, November 12, 2009 by Eric M. Staib
Given the recent announcement that the government’s measure of unemployment has hit 10.2 percent, and given that the official House version of Obama’s healthcare plan, HR 3962, has now passed, a close examination of the effects of “Obamacare” on the labor market is important. It will be no surprise to readers of this site to learn that the Democrats’ bill will seriously harm precisely those poor and uninsured citizens it is ostensibly designed to help. The harm will come by compounding mass unemployment and depriving these citizens of consumption choices.
Obamacare as Labor Tax
According to pages 269–273 of the gargantuan bill,Download PDF employers of full-time workers will be required to cover at least 72.5 percent of the premium of the least expensive health-insurance plan available that fulfills the bill’s minimum criteria of “acceptable coverage.” In cases in which family coverage is provided, 62.5 percent of the premium is to be borne by the employer. Depending on the specific plan and other variables such as location, this amounts to a direct labor tax of approximately $300 per month for an individual, or nearly $700 for family coverage.
The implication of this increased cost is that workers whose revenue productivity is less than $300 per month higher than their wages will be laid off, or have their hours cut to the level that will classify them as part-time. Ignoring established labor law, the bill leaves the definition of part-time and full-time to the discretion of the Commissioner of Obama’s massive new health bureaucracy. The lower the new “Health Choices Commissioner” sets the threshold in an attempt to maximize the number of people receiving the employer contribution, the more hours of production employers will have to shave off to push their employees under the threshold, and the less those workers will take home in wages each week.
Unfortunately, the bill also requires employers to cover a (smaller) percentage of the premium of the same minimum plan for part-time workers. The effects here are even worse than above, because they weaken the ability of an employer to escape the labor tax by employing his workers for fewer hours. Instead, with a labor tax on part-time workers as well, some low-productivity workers who are currently only working a few hours per week will be forced out of work entirely.