Get Your Hands Off My Health Care

I’m tired of hearing “health care has to be fixed.” This endlessly repeated line encompasses two falsehoods; first, that our health care system is broken and, secondly, that government can fix it.

The system is flawed and can be improved, but the Canadians who regularly come here to get what they cannot get at home, the best health care in the world, prove our system is far from broken. Indeed, 89% of Americans say they satisfied with their own personal medical care as do the majority of even those without insurance.

Moreover, when every problem this system faces can be attributed to government distortion of the market, it’s a safe bet more government will only make it worse. The problem is not health care but government health care. The reform we need is less government and more private market competition.

I have read the House health care bill, all 1,018 pages of it. I have also reviewed the Senate bill. They are a disaster; two massive attempts at fanatic social planning with no redeemable value. Both should be discarded so we can start over with real solutions.

The President would have us believe he wants respectful debate and then proceeds to assert doctors would downplay diabetes treatment to generate fees for amputations. He claims fears of rationing are unwarranted while he tells us some older people would be better off taking a pain pill than getting surgery. He relentlessly pursues the takeover of one-sixth of the U.S. economy while the economy itself is reeling from other problems. He seeks more and more personal power to pursue what can only be described as a radical agenda. His actions are those of a juvenile and Congress needs to reign him in.

There are innumerable problems with the House bill. They begin with the mockery the 5-year limit on the life of existing plans makes of the President’s claim we can keep health insurance we like. There are also the 40 pages of the bill devoted to promoting advanced directives for end of life care and associated research, clear signals of future rationing. Moreover, doctors and hospitals are reimbursed by the degree to which they promote these programs and avoid re-admissions of patients.

The bill creates an economic squeeze on providers to encourage acceptance of death over life. The Orwellian “Federal Coordinating Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research” is an exercise in utilitarianism, where our right to health care will ultimately be decided on a cost/benefit analysis that measures how many years of useful life we have left. It’s happening now in Europe and in states like Oregon that push assisted suicide in place of treatment for terminally ill patients. The bill also would fund abortions through the back door. That’s why proponents refuse to amend to say it will not.

Nevertheless, these issues, critical though they may be, are not the fundamental problem with this legislation. What is really at stake is my right to decide my own health care. Nothing could be more personal or foundational as a matter of civil liberties.

Yet, this bill would ultimately give the government to decide, based on nationalized electronic records, whether I am “eligible for a specific service with a specific physician at a specific facility.” The word “shall” appears 1,683 times in this legislation. Over and over again it identifies “stakeholders” in my health care, code for letting others have something to say about my health care. Why are we even considering such a massive intrusion into the lives of Americans? Where is the Constitutional authority for my government to mandate how I provide for my health care? There is none.

The political class is simply asserting power it doesn’t have. It is coercing Americans out of their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the name of cost control. Yet, it is government and two Federal programs in particular that have made costs an issue.

Medicare’s unfunded liabilities now exceed $50 trillion and Medicaid obligations are overwhelming our states. Medicare spending per patient has risen one-third faster than other health care spending, while also forcing the shifting of costs to the privately insured.

This distortion of the marketplace is entirely the fault of a government that knows no bounds in its lust for power. Trusting it to solve the problem it created would be insanity. Letting it indulge its appetite in a mad rush to claim every scrap of liberty left on the table, at a time when we face such serious economic and security issues, would be stark raving lunacy.

This is why Americans are upset. We’ve had more than enough government overreaching in the last year with takeovers of banks and auto companies, out of control spending and massive regulation in a quest to control non-existent global warming.

If Congress wants to help, then start backing government out of health care by ending state mandates that needlessly drive up the cost of health insurance and keep people from buying what they need. Introduce more competition by privatizing elements of the Federal system. Promote Medical Savings Accounts, which have allowed me to reduce my premiums by two-thirds. We must put more personal responsibility for health care back into the system.

Instead, this legislation goes in precisely the opposite direction. It will magnify our government health care problems. Americans instinctively know this from experience. This is why they have risen up in opposition. They know a bill that doesn’t mention “tort reform” even once isn’t serious about controlling costs.

Rather, it’s about growing government and enhancing the power of the political class, those elites who like to think we are misinformed because we don’t accept their philosophy or want their help. Americans also know any legislation Congress exempts itself from can’t be good for them.