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Health-Care Hypnosis

How to Destroy the Greatest Health-Care System the World Has Ever Known

You've heard it before: there are 46 million people in America without health insurance.

It's an outrage!

It's immoral!

It's unjust!

It's an abomination!

It's . . . a freaking lie!

Let's do the thing Obama Zombies hate the most: look at the actual facts.

The 46 million figure they spew forth with brainless obeisance is, in fact, a complete hoax, even by Obama's own admission. But that oft-cited figure is just one of the many reasons the liberal machine was so successful in conning so many members of my generation to swallow Obama's prescription for socialized medicine.

Let's break down the numbers using the Congressional Budget Office statistics:

• Nine million of the uninsured are not citizens of the United States.¹
• Twelve million are already eligible for government assistance but for some reason have been too busy to sign up for free goodies.²
• Seventeen million of the uninsured have household incomes above $50,000.³

Pause and think about that last number for a minute. Seventeen million individuals who are being touted as the "uninsured" make more than $50,000.

How's that mythical 46 million number looking about now? Let's recap: We started off with 46 million, then we subtracted 9 million foreign nationals and illegals. Then we deducted the 12 million who are already eligible for some type of government assistance but haven't claimed it. From there we subtracted the 17 million who are banking more than $50,000, but choose not to purchase insurance because it's their God-given right to do whatever they darn well please with their money.

Where'd that 46 million figure vanish? In reality, the figure drops to around 5 percent--out of a population of 300 million people--who actually may slip through the cracks. And our health care is the envy of the world.

Still, affordability is a serious and important concern, and it's a concern that conservatives care about far more than liberals. So what is the conservative solution for rising health-care costs? Free markets and real competition.

The problem is that a free market where consumers and providers freely partake of each other's services does not exist. Governments work hand in glove with providers, such as chiropractors and drug-abuse counselors, to arrange a package of services (read: mandates) that we are forced to buy--it's corporatism at its ugliest. Every special industry lobbies for its crack at the mandate. It's money in their pocket, after all.

Obama is just like any leftist politician--he gives lip service to taking on special interests but in reality supports policies that are a lobbyist's dream, because they allow the special interests to get subsidized by the government. Obama officials have met privately with health-care executives and drug companies, a brazen violation of his campaign promise to have all negotiations of bills broadcast on C-SPAN for all to see. Of course the mainstream media haven't grilled Obama on this campaign promise. It took a blogger to uncover the truth.⁴ But why broadcast for all to see a policy debate that only involves the takeover of a $2 trillion health-care system? That's peanuts to a liberal! I mean, it is only your money. Why should the White House negotiate in public when it can do so in secret, cutting deals with lobbyists⁵ and pharmaceutical companies⁶ behind the scenes?

Hope and change, people!

When it comes to mandates, it boils down to this: If you want to visit a chiropractor, great. Pay for it out of pocket!

But let's laser in on the kind of government intervention that stifles care and drives up cost. Take my own home state of New York. It is one of three states that have both "community rating" and "guaranteed issue." In a nutshell, community rating obliges insurance companies to charge everyone the same rate regardless of their age or health status. Young people get screwed by this formula: We're stuck paying higher prices to help subsidize the premiums of older Americans. Guaranteed issue means that insurers must "cover anyone at any time," usually at the same rate.

It's no surprise, then, that the states that pile on mandate after mandate and impose community ratings, thereby giving everyone nearly uniform premiums, are the states that have the highest annual insurance premiums. In New York, for instance, insurance is "roughly two to three times higher than the national average," and neighboring New Jersey has premiums for individuals bucking $5,000.⁷ The result is that young New Yorkers pay through the nose.

It is government intrusion into health care that is screwing everything up in the first place. Rather than let people choose what they want covered, some government bureaucrat from on high lays down the law of the land. Such diktats are wholly at odds with a free society.

Now, to be fair, Barack Obama does have a point about "insurance security." If you lose your job, chances are you will lose your medical insurance. For most of the country, and for most young people, insurance is directly tied to employment. It's one of those benefits we're offered for employment, but it's also a government-created system that has turned out to be woefully inadequate for the twenty-first century. Young people are more fluid in the job market. We hop around. We're not like our parents or their parents, who worked at one company building up seniority and benefits over the course of their careers.

Employer-based health care started during World War II when the government imposed strict wage and price controls on American businesses. The result, among other things, was a shortage of people in the workforce. Entrepreneurs did what entrepreneurs do best: they devised a plan to attract skilled workers despite the government's onerous regulations. That plan was to pay for a worker's and his family's medical care. It was a hit. Repressed salaries were made up with "fringe" benefits. Congress eventually passed legislation that allowed those benefits to be tax-exempt, a response to IRS rules requiring that medical coverage be counted as salary and therefore subject to taxation.⁸

The implications are broad. Most individuals now rely on their employers for their health insurance. The trouble is that a system like ours punishes people who don't have employer-based health care and must therefore instead buy insurance privately. The reason this is problematic is that government-sanctioned mandates have driven up the costs of privately purchased insurance. And unlike large companies that buy insurance packages in bulk quantities (thus resulting in cheaper costs), small business owners can't band together with others to buy lower-premium insurance. Worse, those without employer-based health care must use after-tax income to purchase insurance, whereas employer-based coverage gets a huge tax break. It's inequitable.

THE LIBERAL MACHINE'S ability to churn out Obama Zombies on the health-care issue boils down to this: Unfortunately, young people are more susceptible to liberal bloviating about free health care and massive overhauls because younger Americans are the least likely to use health care. That means some left-winger comes along and talks about "shared sacrifices" and drops the 46-million-uninsured myth on a young person's unwitting head and, presto, you've got yourself a freshly minted Obama Zombie. The problem is that waving a magic wand won't produce free health care for everyone.

It's more complicated than that. The very instrument that created the mess in the first place (government) is the very instrument that liberals advocate can solve the mess (more government). Let's see: The government introduced the inefficient concept of employer-based health care, state governments imposed huge burdens with mandates, yet somehow we should trust the government even more?

In any case, the federal government is the reason for exploding costs and the ban on a free exchange of services from people to providers. Did you know that the federal government set up strictures that prevent people from purchasing insurance across state lines, another inhibitor to competition? Insurance companies must fashion health-care policies to the guidelines of each state. Competition does not exist on a national level. Instead we get a hodgepodge of fragmented markets and the large price differences that accompany them. This drives up the health-care insurance prices considerably, especially, as the Heartland Institute points out,⁹ if you live in a state that must cover things like acupuncture and marriage counseling (about one-fourth of states), social workers and contraceptives (more than twenty-five states), and hairpieces and hearing aids (seven states).

Competition, as Obama likes to say, will drive down cost. But we need real competition and real deregulation that will rid costly mandates. Some insurance companies, for instance, steer up to 80 percent of the health-care market and pour money into whatever politicians' hands will protect their monopoly and not allow access across state lines. And while competition is hampered by so much regulation, so much bureaucracy, and so many mandates, liberals in Congress such as Barney Frank (and even Senator Obama while running for president) think they can undo the problems caused by a limited monopoly by converting it into an overall monopoly.

Columnist Ann Coulter said it best: "It's the famous liberal two-step: First screw something up, then claim that it's screwed up because there's not enough government oversight (it's the free market run wild!), and then step in and really screw it up in the name of 'reform.' "¹⁰

For too many young Americans, the clarion call for "reform" translates into thinking that health care is some magical right that somebody else must pay for and shouldn't be treated as any other commodity, such as food, electricity, or cars, for that matter. During the election, Obama called health care a right, not a privilege, adding that Americans have a "moral commitment" to provide health care to every American. It's a great feel-good sound bite. But such an entitlement mentality is a dramatic departure from the Declaration of Independence's guarantee to protect our life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. The federal government accomplishes this, as our Constitution outlines, with less than twenty enumerated roles.

An MTV reporter in Delaware did a report on young people and health insurance called "The Young, Hot, and Uninsured." One individual interviewed, Gabriel Humphreys, a twenty-eight-year-old techie, grumbled that he didn't have health insurance, especially so he could go to the hospital after a snowboarding accident. "I actually hurt myself like eight weeks ago," Humphreys said. "I tore my rotator cuff while snowboarding and, you know, I couldn't go to the doctor. I could, but, you know, I didn't want to pay that out of pocket because it would've been horrible."

Zombie Gabriel said that he favors a "nationalized" health system, where everyone is covered, and he bemoaned the fact that we can fight wars but don't have the government insure people. Obama's generalities are an easy target for young people who are told they're in need of insurance, with catastrophe knocking on their doorstep.

Hey, dude, if you don't have health care, and you don't want to pay for it, then don't go snowboarding! If you still believe in personal responsibility, any personal responsibility, raise your hand. Why should you, I, or anyone have to fund this brother's snowboarding accidents?

During the campaign, story after story told us how young voters wanted health-care "reform." One Rutgers University student, Joe Shure, told an NBC reporter that "health care is a huge concern. And the fact that the U.S. is an industrialized country without universal health care is an embarrassment, I think."¹¹

Obama certainly embodies this mentality. His rhetorical tactics are always the same: hook young people with big-government schemes by calling it the "empathy deficit," which is our inability "to put ourselves in someone else's shoes," as he told the students at Northwestern:

We live in a culture that discourages empathy. A culture that too often tells us our principal goal in life is to be rich, thin, young, famous, safe, and entertained. A culture where those in power too often encourage these selfish impulses. . . . I hope you choose to broaden, and not contract, your ambit of concern. Not because you have an obligation to those who are less fortunate, although you do have that obligation. Not because you have a debt to all of those who helped you get to where you are, although you do have that debt.

It's because you have an obligation to yourself. Because our individual salvation depends on collective salvation. And because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you will realize your true potential--and become full-grown.¹²

Nice do-gooder rhetoric, but my goodness, collective salvation? Obama's razzle-dazzle logic-free sound bites induced their intended Zombie effect: "I have listened to him and I liked what I've heard so far," said Julie Rattendi, a first-time voter. "I'm just looking for someone to believe in."¹³

Yet now that Obama is the leader of the free world, what's interesting is that young people have been visibly absent in supporting the government plan for health care. It's caught the eye of the media. Where are the Obama supporters, or the "Obamaniacs"? Where are those troubled, unconfident students who put all their faith in Obama during the campaign? They sang songs about him; prayed to him; rapped to him; made love to him; marched to him; fainted to him; obsessed over him; and now, well . . . they're absent.

The drop-off goes right to the cult of personality, and the fact that young people buy into the utopian bulldoodle that Obama serves on a platter but are generally healthy, so there's no urgency or need to engage in the debate. Plus, the campaign is over. They can wait another four years to grovel, faint, and copulate at the Messiah's feet. Leftists and youth vote poseurs of Rock the Vote such as Heather Smith dismiss the disinterest as a backlash from the partisan rancor seen at health-care town halls. So to step up interest, Heather gets blogger Perez Hilton and other celebrities together to try to get young people motivated to back Obama's policy.

But the reason none of this seems to be working is that it all smacks of further limits on individual freedom and choice. Heck, liberals are already calling on Obama to regulate the food Americans eat, just as New York City banned trans fats. One liberal, Michael Pollan, wrote in a New York Times op-ed that the Obama administration must declare a war on the "American way of eating"; Dear Leader must work with the food industry to "take a good hard look at the elephant in the room [fat people] and galvanize a movement to slim it [us] down."¹⁴

Jim Geraghty of National Review Online summed up the Obama pie-in-the-sky health-care philosophy quite nicely:

We're expected to believe a Democrat-controlled Congress, with deep divisions in its ranks, will put together a bill that will keep everything the same for those who have health insurance through their jobs, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA; mandate coverage of pre-existing conditions; ban caps on coverage; mandate coverage of routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies; offer health insurance to 30 million uninsured; provide tax credits for small businesses; painlessly mandate coverage for the young healthy uninsured; provide hardship waivers; provide choice and competition; keep insurance companies honest; avoid taxpayer subsidies for public option plans; keep out illegal immigrants; not pay for abortions; and not deny care to the elderly because of cost-benefit analyses, all while not adding one dime to our deficits--either now or in the future.¹⁵

Let's punt all our personal responsibility and just lay it at the feet of Dear Leader. The government can't even make a profit delivering mail, yet they want to dictate a health-care policy for 300 million Americans?! Say what? That makes as much sense as letting Michael Vick take care of your dog while you're out of town.

You, as an individual, and you, as the head of a household, have the single biggest incentive to provide medical coverage. Keep in mind that "rights" never impose financial obligations on other people. But to claim that somebody has the right to health care means that somebody else must pay for it. My right to free speech doesn't guarantee me that you will pay for a microphone; my right to religion doesn't guarantee that you'll provide me with a collection plate, Bible, and hymnals. In reality, Zombies have as much of a "right" to health care as they do to taxpayer-funded trips to KFC to feast on a bucket of wings and biscuits. Food is a much more basic necessity than health care, yet we do not have food-based insurance, or even food-based savings accounts. The late, great economist Milton Friedman had this axiom: Nobody spends somebody else's money as wisely or as frugally as he spends his own. Only in Disney movies does redistribution of wealth work.

We should be allowed to choose our level of insurance, like we do car premiums: to provide risk pools for consumers that cover them against catastrophic and unanticipated costs! I definitely don't expect or want to get into a car accident, but I'm covered for that level of possibility. My insurance, however, doesn't pay for my oil change, my gas, my car washes, etc. I pay for that out of my pocket, and as a result, I search for the best deals. It is truly a free market in action. The closest thing we have to a free market in health care is in the world of cosmetic surgery. There are no heavy government regulations or subsidies. People pay out of pocket, competition flourishes, and consumers are satisfied. As Ed Morrissey of Hot Air explains,

If anyone wants to see how a medical-care market could work rationally, all they need to do is see how plastic surgery and Lasik markets work. Because the consumer has to deal with the actual cost of service, these providers are not overwhelmed. Because the providers get actual market compensation for their goods and services, there is no shortage of providers. And because of both of these facts, competition between providers keeps costs reasonable and rational. Health-care reform should learn from that example and move closer to that kind of market, rather than towards more scarcity, less choice, and less freedom.¹⁶

But the liberal lives in his own world, where your wallet is his piggy bank. And the power of their emotion is, well, powerful, but also infantilizing. Take Erica Williams of the George Soros-bankrolled group Campus Progress. She appointed herself to represent "youth" issues. In a column for the Huffington Post in support of Obama's health-care scheme, she impressively manages to showcase her ignorance. After admitting that she doesn't like to "haggle over the nuances" of health care, Erica writes:

I could tell them that health care reform is my fight because my partner, 25 years old, is an entrepreneur, consultant, and all around brilliant guy who cares more about professional fulfillment than financial gain and has thus been without insurance for 3 years. I've cried myself to sleep many a night over his lack of coverage, terrified that at any moment, an illness or accident could push us into financial ruin in the beginning stages of our life together.

I could tell them that health care reform is my fight because 60% of my friends (yes, I did the math . . .) have lost their jobs in the past 6 months and don't go to the doctor. . . .

I could say that a young friend of mine is afraid to get a test that would tell whether or not he has a congenital heart disease because he is worried that he will forevermore have a pre-existing condition.

I could also tell you that in addition to being young, I'm a woman of color and that for my demographic in particular, health care is a life or death issue.

And all of those reasons would be true. But for my generation, health care reform is more than a personal story or experience: it is a moral and humanitarian mandate.¹⁷

Well, well. Her "partner" doesn't purchase health care, because he would rather invest his money elsewhere. Fine. That's freedom. Not a problem. If a person would rather spend his money on a BlackBerry and expensive dinners than insurance, cool. Go for it. But he made his choice. Furthermore, Erica claims that her generation has made health care a "moral and humanitarian mandate." Just one problem: she can't point to any such mandate in any of our founding charters. If she would truly represent the interest of young people, she would discuss the massive redistribution of wealth that flows from young to old.

Our system today, pushed by liberals in government, supports a scheme where grandparents steal from the pockets of their grandchildren. Current entitlements are so out of control that it is inconceivable that people like Erica Williams would try to foist yet another costly entitlement--socialized health care--on an entire generation. In 2008, the U.S. comptroller general estimated that the total burden in present value of our entitlement programs--the three largest being Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid--is about $53 trillion! With a t! The comptroller, David Walker, said, "I know it is hard to make sense of what 'trillions' means. One way to think about it is this: Imagine we decided to put aside and invest today enough to cover these promises tomorrow. It would take approximately $455,000 per American household--or $175,000 for every man, woman, and child in the United States."¹⁸

As Walker notes, the federal government has been so inefficient with Medicare and Medicaid, completely government-run to begin with, that the two programs "threaten to consume an untenable share of the budget and economy in the coming decades. The federal government has essentially written a 'blank check' for these programs."¹⁹

Hey, Erica, how about we find a moral and humanitarian mandate to get the government's grubby hands off our wallets! If poseurs like Erica really cared about young people they would demand inaction from a government that has already proven itself to be unworthy with our money. A better option would be to let individuals take control of their medical future. Remember the Friedman axiom: Nobody spends somebody else's money as wisely or as frugally as he spends his own.

In reality, we have been handed a broken health-care policy, not by greed, not by selfish "profit-mongers" (I'm sure Erica works for free, eh?), but by selfish government bureaucrats who think they can devise a health-care scheme for 300 million Americans.

The moral outrage is that young Americans are not paying for their own retirement, their own health care, but for that of others. Obama likes to talk about capping premiums that people will pay and subsidizing costs (with your money). But why doesn't he cap taxes? Why won't he cap regulation? People know best how to spend their own money.

Shawn Tully, editor at large at Fortune magazine, identified freedoms lost under ObamaCare. Keep in mind that there's little freedom to begin with. Still, the Democrat plan doubles down on stupid.

The bills in both houses require that Americans purchase insurance through "qualified" plans offered by health-care "exchanges" that would be set up in each state. The rub is that the plans can't really compete based on what they offer. The reason: The federal government will impose a minimum list of benefits that each plan is required to offer.²⁰

The Department of Health and Human Services will be able to define what types of coverage are offered in these "exchanges," including the mandates that are driving up state insurance markets, as we touched on. Connecticut, for instance, forces providers to cover hair transplants, hearing aids, and breast reconstruction. Now, I know people like Erica don't like to get into the "nuance" of the debate and just like to speak in "general" terms, but why on God's green earth should young people have to cover any of that? Moreover, how does federalizing such superfluous mandates ensure that prices will go down? The thing is, liberals don't care about cost. All their pet programs--all of them--are dead broke. Yet they spend away. In a free system we would get to choose our coverage. But in Obama's system a health commissioner would. Seriously.

The Heritage Foundation points this out about ObamaCare:

The Health Choices Commissioner will decide what services health insurance must cover, and under what conditions. These choice ("standards") will apply to both employer-sponsored insurance and insurance purchased through the Health Insurance Exchange, which will be operated by the Health Choices Administration. There will be no other legal way to buy health insurance. There will, however, be a "Qualified Health Benefits Plan Ombudsman" to provide you with "assistance" in "choosing a qualified health benefits plan in which to enroll"--from among the plan or plans the Commissioner has already chosen, of course.²¹

I thought we fought a revolution to rid ourselves from kings.

In any event, ObamaCare also adopts "community ratings," which, as you may remember, means that patients pay the same rate regardless of age or health status. This no doubt drastically harms young people, as our level of care is much less than older folks. In fact, insurance companies will be forbidden from charging older people more than twice what they charge young people. Normally, the ratio is 5 to 1, but now it's 2 to 1. It's a significant transfer of wealth from the young to old.

As Tully points out, "So if a 20-year-old who costs just $800 a year to insure is forced to pay $2,500, a 62-year-old who costs $7,500 would pay no more than $5,000."

If car insurance companies had to charge everyone the same regardless of driving history, what would happen? Would your car insurance decrease or increase? In fact, this brings up a necessary point that is missed in this whole debate: Why don't you watch your own health care? You see, there is a big difference between health care and medical care. Health-care management is up to individuals. It's all the essentials we learn as a kid: eating right, exercise, watch those trans fats, lots of greens, lots of fruits, get good rest, don't be stressed, etc. That's health care, and it is entirely your personal responsibility.

If you have medical complications because of your diet, which consists of eating Wendy's every night of the week, then why should taxpayers have to pay for your bad choices? Is that harsh? Hell no! What's harsh is bankrupting a generation and not talking honestly about incentives and personal responsibility.

Hey, kids, forgo the latest Jordans, forgo the flat-screen TV, forgo the vacations, forgo the nights eating out, forgo the blingbling, forgo the $120 cell phone plan. You don't need all the gizmos and gadgets. Grow up and rely on yourself for a change. Now, that's change we can believe in! If people are paying the costs themselves, they are their best prevention method. That's the real preventive cure. When the government controls costs, it will also allocate care. It's basic economics.

Any piece of legislation that forces--yes, forces--young people to purchase insurance that bureaucrats deem acceptable will be a disaster. And if young people decide not to opt in, they will be taxed. Taxed for not buying into a government-devised health-care scheme! To put this in perspective, our founding fathers went ape on a single, minuscule tax on tea. It's true that young people are accurately called the "young invincibles" because, barring some catastrophic accident or illness, we rarely get sick. Even the liberal Kaiser Family Foundation, in a survey of young people, acknowledges that 95 percent of all young people report that they are in good or excellent health. Yes, 95 percent. Why would we want to install community-rating standards or extra mandates that would drive up the cost for virtually every young person in order to subsidize older folks? When John Fund of the Wall Street Journal pointed this out in an op-ed, that Obama's disastrous health-care plans mean "lower prices for older (and wealthier) folks, but high prices for the young," Rock the Vote--stalwart defenders of liberalism, not the youth--responded thus:

Mr. Fund believes young people will face higher costs if reform passes and cites as evidence proposals that would limit insurance companies to a 2-to-1 ratio on age-based health care premiums--that is, insurance companies would only be able to charge older people double what they charge younger people for the same coverage. While the 2-to-1 ratio is designed to keep costs down for older people, Mr. Fund believes that will come at the expense of young people.

He ignores two critical facts. First, under proposals currently being considered in Congress, coverage would be made more affordable because premiums for young people would be based on their income levels. Second, premium increases would be addressed by the government in the form of credits. As such, young people's costs will remain low because of income-based premiums and subsidies to make up cost differences--not because insurance companies have free rein to discriminate against older people.²²

Shall we remember how this group flacking for Obama posits itself as nonpartisan? Regardless, Rock the Vote is run by idiots, and here's why. Notice that they don't rebut Fund's correct point that premiums would increase on the new mandated ratio, but they instead defend the new and costly mandates by saying that the government will step in and provide "credits," which are basically welfare payments, to people who can't afford coverage. Again, it's the liberal two-step in action! The government's mandates, by Rock the Vote's own admission, would drive up the cost of coverage. But that's fine, because good ol' Uncle Sam will step in to subsidize the medical bill (with your tax dollars).

Health-care costs are high because of government intervention, yet the liberal machine advocates more government policies that will increase the price of admission.

The fact is that 70 percent of young people have insurance, and out of that 30 percent who do not have insurance, 94 percent report being in good and excellent health, compared to the 95 percent of all young adults--uninsured and insured--who claim that same health status.²³ Yes, Zombies, the drop-off is only 1 percent. There is no crisis. There is no emergency. Yet, as we've seen, the political left wants costly mandates that drive up the price for families and young people.

Obama and his liberal cohorts like to bemoan the fact that the United States is the only industrialized nation that doesn't en- sure health care for every single citizen. They view this as a detriment. It's a great fluffy, substance-free talking point. But it misses the entire scope of what America is. The very core of our being is that we trust people over politicians. It's on that principle that America has been the center of opportunity. It is a testament to our Constitution and our self-reliance that the government has not (yet) taken over our health-care system. It's to be celebrated and admired.