Arbitrary Government And Health Care

Thomas Sowell: Once Upon A Time, Grown-Ups Had No Illusions About Arbitrary Government Power

(National Review Online)  Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

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Many years ago, as a small child, I was told one of those old-fashioned fables for children. It was about a dog with a bone in his mouth, who was walking on a log across a stream.

The dog looked down into the water and saw his reflection. He thought it was another dog with a bone in his mouth - and it seemed to him that the other dog's bone was bigger than his. He decided that he was going to take the other dog's bone away and opened his mouth to attack. The result was that his own bone fell into the water and was lost.

At the time, I didn't like that story and wished they hadn't told it to me. But the passing years and decades have made me realize how important that story was, because it wasn't really about dogs.

Today, the president of the United States is telling us that he is going to help us take that other dog's bone away - and the end result is likely to be very much like what it was in that children's fable.

Whether we are supposed to take that bone away from the doctors, the hospitals, the pharmaceutical companies, or the insurance companies, the net result is likely to be the same - most of us will end up with worse medical care than we have available today. We will have opened our mouth and dropped a very big bone into the water.

While I was told a story in my childhood to help me understand something about the real world, today adults are being told things to reduce them to childish thinking.

The most childish of all the things being said in the august setting of a joint session of Congress last week was that millions of people can be added to the government's health-insurance plan without increasing the federal deficit at all.

If the president of the United States could do that, it is hard to imagine what he would do as an encore. Walking on water would be an anticlimax.

What is equally childish is the notion that the great majority of Americans who have medical insurance, and who say they are satisfied with it, should be panicked and stampeded into supporting vast increases in the arbitrary power of Washington bureaucrats to take medical decisions out of the hands of doctors - ostensibly because a minority of Americans do not have medical insurance.

There was a time, within living memory, when most Americans did not have health insurance - and it was not the end of the world, as so many in politics and the media seem to depict it today.

As someone who lived through that era, and who spent decades without medical insurance, I find it hard to be panicked and stampeded into bigger and worse problems because some people do not have medical insurance, including many who could afford it if they chose to.

What did we do, back during the years when most Americans had no medical insurance? I did what most people did. I depended on a "single payer" - myself. When I didn't have the money, I paid off my medical bills in installments.

The birth of my first child was not covered by medical insurance. I paid off the bill, month by month, until the time finally came when I could tell my wife that the baby was now ours, free and clear.

In a country where everything imaginable is bought and paid for on credit, why is it suddenly a national crisis if some people cannot pay cash up front for medical treatment?

That is not the best way to do things for all people and all medical treatments, which is why most Americans today choose to have medical insurance. But millions of other people choose not to - often young and healthy people, sometimes deadbeats who use emergency rooms and don't pay at all.

Is this ideal? No. But if every deviation from the ideal is a reason to be panicked and stampeded into putting dangerous arbitrary powers into the hands of government, then go directly to totalitarianism, do not pass "Go," do not collect $200.

And go ahead and drop your bone in the water, in hopes that you can get somebody else's bigger bone.

[roach9703]

Mr. Sowell, you are ABSOLUTELY right. You make the argument for insurance that limits RISK to what we can afford. If "health insurance" was designed that way, there would be no crisis.
However, whose with preexisting conditions, need some form of insurance so they too can limit risk. This could be provided by government reinsurance for those risks.

[polisigh]

NRO and Republicans can be depended on to defend the rich and powerful insurance companies to the detriment of the needy. The US pays twice as much or more than any other developed nation per capita for health care, yet we are ranked at #37 by WHO. Only NRO would reliably defend such a raw deal.
We already pay inflated prices for inferior services for the uninsured. The same fools support a multi-trillion dollar war based on lies but cannot support health services other nations take for granted.

[kikomanson]

Thomas Sowell must have been asleep in the last 10 years! According to the "Employers Health Benefits Survey by the Kaiser Family foundation".
The average cost of job based family health care insurance climbed
5 % to $13,375 in 2009, making this the 10th straight year of health care increases, In 1999, when a year of health care coverage cost about $5,791.
In 10 years health care has risen 131%, in those same 10 years that growth far outpaces the 38% increase in wages and 28 % growth of inflation over the same period.
Why is there a need to make profit on health care? A basis need for all Americans, The money is already there in the hands of greedy doctors, greedy hospitals and a greedy Pharmaceutical Corporations, that has put the power in their hands by the Republican control Congress.
Obama is correct, we need to redistribute the health care dollars now in the hands of the Medical Insurance Corporations,and cover the rest of the population of the U.S. !

[imnho]

As usual Thomas Sowell is so rabid in his anti goverment attitude he has no clue as to the situation. There are many people who do not have a job due to the economy. These peoplle have lost there health insurance. They will wind up owing more then they could ever pay if they have a major Illness. That does not seem to bother him at all.

A lot of time people who catch cancer wind up going broke even with health insureance. Its very tragic when that happens.That does not bother Sowell. He figures it won't be him so why should he care?

The reality of the situatiion is that as medical costs continue to sprial out of costs it will eventually eat the whole nation's budget.

[noloyalisti]

As Thom Hartmann keeps asking, why should there be profit AT ALL in healthcare.

If we let the right wing corporate Supreme Court uphold Corporate Personhood, we WILL have fascism and this financial situation will get much, much worse for us.

A great example is what the health insurance companies are doing to us. And if the Court rules in favor, they will be able to write the laws. Heil!

[pubsrtoast]

We already know that on a per capita basis we already spend almost twice what other industrialized countries spend. It is the insistence that healthcare is a commodity that must produce profit margins and bottom lines that makes the proposal into a budget buster.

[proudscot]

bombs and guns. We need more bombs and guns. Otherwise how are we going to kill all the enemies we've made up?
Ziiiiilllllions of dollars. Sick people can xxxx off, especially if they're too poor to pay for it

[pigsinlipstick]

ANOTHER 'CON'SERVATIVE, WHAT A BUNCH OF ANTI AMERICAN LIAR'S

VOTE OUT THE RPEUBLI'CON's IF YOU WANT TO END THIS MESS

ONCE AND FOR ALL

[rightbehind]

That story doesn't apply at all. We pay more for healthcare than any other nation on this planet and it's rated 37TH just above Cuba a country with no resources. ICUs in some cases cost mote than 10 thousand a day for a single person. A prosthetic limb can cost more than 75 thousand for a single person and take about 3 days to make. Even those little scooters when leased can cost more than 4000 a year for a single person. On top of that we are carrying multi million dollars salaries for healthcare HMO CEOs , companies that do nothing but push billing. A phony baloney market created with the stroke of a republican pen. I say we bury this bone in the ground along with any yellow dog democrats who try to dig it back out. Bring on the vote!

[proudscot]

the guy who wrote this drivel clearly has the brains of a dog.
Sorry that's an insult to dogs

[pigsinlipstick]

HE IS FROM THE HOOVER INSTITUTE THE POLITICAL ARM OF FOX NEWS,

ANOTHER KARL ROVE REPUBLI'CON', A LIAR