Obama and health care

Americans are very proud of our rights. We have the right to do this. We have the right to do this. We assume we have the right to do pretty much anything we want to. An interesting thing about the rights contemplated in the Declaration of Independence and guaranteed through the Bill of Rights, all of our rights are stated in the negative. Our philosophy is that we are born endowed with certain rights and no one has the right to take those rights away from us. We establish laws and administrative rules to manage the bureaucracy and keep our communities running, but still the pattern is the same. Government shall not… You have rights because you are born. No one gave them to you. You don’t have to do anything to earn them. You simply have them.

What would happen if we suspended that pattern to define a right as something given to you by another person? We’d be dependent on another person to tell us what and when we have the right to do something. Imagine having to ask permission to voice your opinion. Imagine being a non-Caucasian male needing to ask permission to vote. Imagine a government sensor in the news rooms of America and surfing the blogosphere to approve news and opinions. Imagine police having the right to enter your home without probable cause of a crime, search your property and seize it without telling you why or for how long? Imagine being detained for an indeterminate amount of time for a reason you have no right to know. That’s the difference between inalienable rights and bestowed rights. Your rights are dependent on the whims of another person.

Barack Obama wants to make health care a right. He wants to insure every single person in the country. My family has been on private, employer-paid health care, uninsured, and recipients of public health insurance. We understand what it means to be uninsurable. A common theme is that you get what you pay for.

Our health care system has its problems. John Q spoke to me. Western medicine does not practice healing. It prescribes drugs to cover up symptoms and then more drugs to address the symptoms caused by the other drugs, and you can have access to the system if you can afford it or work for someone who can. We have traded a connection with our bodies and nature for a sterile, detached institutional model directed by drug companies, hospitals, doctors associations, medical schools, unions, and government agencies.

For what it is, our current system has been the most effective health care system in the world. It’s produced more drugs, therapies, technology, procedures, and detailed understanding of the mechanics of the human body than any other model. The medical advances achieved through the competitive model are astounding, but there is a difference between health care/management and healing and living healthy. There are many disadvantages to our current model, and until the holistic revolution restores our connection to the wisdom of the ages, it’s what we have.

Given that context, single-payer health care will bankrupt this country, slow the advance of modern medicine, frustrate the opportunity to receive the health care we want, and put our lives in the hands of actuaries calculating the cost of providing continued care.

The Government Accounting Office published a report in April of 2008 that examined the long-term challenges faced by our economy and the trends in health care costs and demographics. They founded a funding gap in the amount of $54 Trillion (that on top of the $10 Trillion national debt) to cover the lifetime benefits of those eligible to for Social Security, Medicare, and other government programs. $54 Trillion is roughly $500,000 for every household in the nation.

The reason is because our society is getting older, living longer, living less healthy, and getting sicker more often and in more ways. Obama and most other democrats want to increase this liability to cover everyone for longer! We just can’t afford it.

Just a few weeks ago, Hawaii announced that budget shortfalls led them to discontinue the nation’s only state universal child health care program in the country just seven months after it launched. One of the many problems with single-payer plans like the one in Hawaii and the one that Obama proposes is that people and businesses that can afford health care choose to let the state for it. Why pay for something if you can get it for free?

Obama’s plan reduces the incentive for innovation in our health care system by removing patent protections and allowing for importing of drugs from other countries. His plan makes the Federal government the single largest buyer (if not the only buyer) of prescription drugs in the nation. He will drive down the profit, drive down the incentive and slow the growth of medicine. We’ll see long lines, doctor shortages, and limited care. Don’t forget that people also come to this country for health care they can’t receive at home.

In spite of all the problems that come with universal health care, the most important may be the fundamental difference between an inalienable right and a bestowed right. There has to be a better way to preserve life without turning over our agency to another person.

The more guarantees a person gives you, the less opportunity they’ll allow you.