Dear President Trump: I Don’t Want to be “the Party of Healthcare.” I Want to be the Party of the Constitution.

A federal judge in Texas recently ruled that Obamacare is unconstitutional due to its mandate requiring Americans to buy health insurance, and the Trump administration has decided not to defend the law, reigniting the “repeal and replace” battle lost by the Republicans following Trump’s election.  Speaking on the decision not to defend the law, Trump has declared that Republicans will become “the party of healthcare,” and while I am shaking my head in dismay, Barack Obama must be smiling to himself, because he knows that even if Democrats lose the battle over Obamacare, they will have won the war to make the federal government (and therefore taxpayers) ultimately responsible for healthcare.    

Obamacare was nothing more than a wealth-transfer scheme in which taxpayers were forced to subsidize health insurance for people who supposedly couldn’t afford it on their own.  I say supposedly because whether or not someone can “afford” something is a complicated question that requires a study of what choices they’ve made in life, and an assessment of whether or not they’re doing anything and everything they should be doing to assume full responsibility for themselves and their families.  Nothing like that happens in Obamacare or in any welfare program run by the geniuses managing our federal government.  The war fought by Obama and Democrats wasn’t over Obamacare, per se.  It was over whether it is the proper role of the federal government to ensure that all Americans have healthcare.  I am not 100% clear on what Trump means when he says Republicans will be “the party of healthcare,” but it’s difficult to see how that label restores the power of the people to be free of the federal government’s interference in our healthcare and in our wallets. 

I’ve written on this subject so many times that I feel like a broken record.  The only role the federal government legitimately has with respect to health insurance and healthcare is to ensure a free and fair marketplace.  To that end we should be pursuing tort reform, reducing the regulatory burden and paperwork mandates associated with healthcare, getting rid of barriers to competition and legislating transparency in healthcare pricing.  The federal government made sure that we know how many calories are in that cheeseburger we just ordered, but good luck finding out how many thousands of dollars that surgery is going to cost you.  A friend of mine was recently injured when her car was rear-ended.  Her medical bills are now close to $300,000 and she’s not done with her treatment.  Everyone, myself included, has a story about the outrageous medical bill they received for something.  Democrats and Obamacare did NOTHING to address the immoral scam that has become our health industry.  Instead they just found a way to pass the bill to someone else – hard-working, tax-paying strangers who have zero control over the health habits of the people they’ve been forced to subsidize.  That’s not only wrong, it continues our slide towards economic suicide.  If we could only have the good sense to take the steps that would restore rational, competitive pricing to healthcare, then it wouldn’t seem so crazy to make every capable citizen responsible for paying his own bills.  What a novel idea, eh? 

We MUST have the fight in this country to restore the Constitution and the limits of the federal government to use its citizens as a credit card.  Only when that happens is there any hope of Making America Great Again.  Good luck to us.

~CW

The post can also be viewed at the blog site The Pesky Truth.

Healthcare, the Constitution, and Why are Republicans Such Fools?

Free Market Healthcare

NOT Free Market Healthcare

Any questions?

Can you imagine what it would be like if Republican politicians were put in charge of removing a stubborn Band-Aid from a child’s arm?

Republican #1:  “We can’t just rip off the Band-Aid!  It’s going to hurt and then her parents will be mad and our approval ratings will go down!

Republican #2:  “What if we brought in the finest surgeons (at taxpayers’ expense) to surgically remove her arm, rip off the Band-Aid, and then reattach the arm?”

Republican #3:  “That’s crazy!  Let’s just bring in a team of anesthesiologists (at taxpayers’ expense) to sedate the child, then rip off the Band-Aid while she’s sleeping.”

Republican #4:  “Or we could hire a circus (at taxpayers’ expense) to distract her while we rip the Band-Aid off!”

After recently postponing a vote on the Republican healthcare bill, Senate leader Mitch McConnell said, “This is a very complicated subject.”

I suppose it is complicated, but that’s in no small part because Republicans have exacerbated the problem with their foolish and misguided efforts to “fix” the Obamacare mess with the impossible, self-imposed condition of not upsetting anyone.   Furthermore, if not upsetting anyone is the goal, they’re failing miserably.  And apparently if anyone IS to be upset it can’t be the freeloaders who should be paying for their own healthcare, the insurance companies who conspired with Obama or the medical industry that profits so handsomely by gaming the system.  No, as always it must be middleclass taxpayers, most of whom already provide for their own insurance, who take the fall because these are the folks who can be depended upon to re-elect the same Republicans that keep failing them.  This is the insanity that is our Party.

The Supreme Court’s traitorous ruling notwithstanding, the federal government has no business involving itself in the healthcare of American citizens.   I know this in my heart and in my brain to be a fundamental and inarguable truth, because the evidence speaks for itself.  Just look at the mess that’s been made with respect to both our healthcare “system” (more on that later), the infinitely spiraling costs and the take-no-prisoners fighting that consumes both bodies of congress as they battle on behalf of their constituencies.  You don’t need to be an expert on the Constitution or on the Founding Fathers to see that this chaos and violation of our liberties is not the product of their design.   This is what the Constitution was supposed to protect us from.  As long as the federal government insists on inserting itself where it doesn’t belong and assuming powers that the Constitution does not expressly assign to it, chaos will always be just an election away, if not the everyday norm.  That is the principled, moral argument for repealing Obamacare.  It was wrong from the get go, therefore it must be undone.  But since so many Republicans no longer care about what is right or wrong according to the Constitution, I’ll make the practical argument as well.

The first problem with the “healthcare system” in the U.S. is that it was never supposed to be a “system.” “System” implies central planning, purposeful design and continuous regulation with the goal of producing a defined outcome.  None of this has historically been applicable to healthcare in the U.S. which, aside from the unique and polluting involvement of the insurance industry (more on that later), should be like any other consumer product bought and sold in the free market.  But the Left understands that a clever lie repeated often enough becomes the truth, and their nagging insistence, year after year, that the “healthcare system is broken” has turned myth into reality in a classic case of the tail wagging the dog.  How can the system be “broken” if the system doesn’t exist?  It was a slight of hand that enabled the federal government to justify meddling in something that the Constitution gives it no power to meddle in.  To whatever extent a U.S. “healthcare system” exists, it is not by design but by deceit and default.

One of the reasons Republicans are having so much trouble trying to cut and paste a bill that “fixes” healthcare, besides the fact that it’s outside the scope of authority of the federal government, is because they want to give voters the benefits of a free market without the negatives of a free market.  Insurance is supposed to be something you buy in case you get sick, not after you get sick.  That’s what makes it insurance.  A free market requires that you make trade-offs and sacrifices and establish priorities in your life.  Consequences, good and bad, are a necessary element of the free market system.  And here’s the really big rub:  Neither Obamacare nor the patchwork “fix” cobbled together by Republicans will “fix” healthcare because it does nothing to lower the real cost.  U.S. Healthcare costs are comparatively high due to:

Administrative costs

Defensive medicine costs

Drug costs

Impediments to competition in the market

Absence of a true consumer-producer relationship

That last one’s a biggie.  The educated consumer is a key factor to making products and services affordable, and yet it’s nearly impossible for the average person to be an informed and discerning consumer in a market dictated by deals between insurance companies and medical providers.  If congress really wants to meddle in something, paving the way to transparency and consistency in medical pricing would be a good start.  Defensive medicine costs and impediments to cross-state competition are also areas where congress could help the free market, if they would only do it instead of just talking about it.

Our reliance upon insurance companies who act as the middleman in nearly every doctor-patient transaction also inflates the cost of healthcare.  Insurance was originally designed to protect consumers from large and often unexpected healthcare costs.  Now it’s more of a payment processing system for everything from ingrown toenails on up, which means your doctor has to hire more staff to interface with insurance companies.

Finally, one in every five Americans gets their health care through Medicaid.¹   This is an outrageous and inexcusable breach of congress’s fiduciary obligation to American taxpayers.  The vast majority of Medicaid recipients could be and should be paying for their own healthcare, which they might actually be able to do if our merry meddlers in the federal government would ever focus their efforts on reducing the cost of medical services and insurance rather than simply transferring the cost from one person to another.

In sum Republicans aren’t doing themselves or the American people any favors by making the repeal of Obamacare so complicated.  This is the ideal time, with their approval ratings already low and expectations waning, to go bold and rip that Band-Aid off as quickly and cleanly as they can.  Let this be the congress that helps restore the Constitution rather than helping to kill it.

~CW

¹http://familiesusa.org/issues/medicaid/

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The Trouble with Trump, Republicans and Obamacare

I’m not optimistic about the demise of Obamacare.  Watching Republicans deal with this ticking time bomb for the past eight years has been like watching the Keystone Cops handle a stick of dynamite with a lighted fuse.  Oh there’s a handful who know what they’re doing, but they’re hindered by the clowns who haven’t got a clue, a sad reminder that conservatives don’t get to choose who dons the ‘Republican’ label.  First they talked about repealing it.  Then this became “repeal and replace” after Republicans predictably fell into the Left’s trap of adopting the “healthcare system” rhetoric and assuming ownership in the event they “break” Obamacare, LOL.  With conflicts and debates about what the “replacement” should entail, Republicans naturally can’t agree on how to proceed.  Meanwhile Obama and his leftist cohorts are rubbing their hands together with glee because many Americans are bound to be unhappy, and unhappiness fuels the divide that keeps the Democrat Party alive.  They know too many foolish Republicans will not be able to resist the temptation to attempt the impossible – and potentially suicidal – task of trying to please everyone, including even the freeloaders who don’t deserve to be pleased.  That will be their doom.

Here at home I’m banging my head against the wall because this dilemma over how to proceed would resolve itself quite easily if only Republicans would go back to their conservative roots (assuming they have any, which I concede is taking a lot for granted) and begin by asking one fundamental question, which is as follows:

 

Every undertaking by congress should begin with a similarly simple question.  That’s how the Constitution was intended to work, and if Republicans would only remember this their jobs would be infinitely simpler and clearer; but of course they don’t remember it which is why they’re struggling.  I would say the same for Democrats except we all know that the Constitution never matters to them except in those instances where it can be used to constrain Republicans.

How incredibly tragic is it that our brilliant founding fathers gave congress the perfect procedure manual for how to do their jobs but they keep forgetting that it exists?  Instead they run around in circles like the axiomatic headless chickens, tripping over each other and mucking up the coop.  Just for the fun of it, let’s look at what would happen if Republicans would take my simple advice and begin their deliberations by answering the question above.

Let’s start with the right answer first, which is, of course, “No.”  The federal government has neither the responsibility nor the authority to ensure that every American has healthcare under the Constitution.  As I promised that makes the job of congress very simple on this issue, because it can’t get any simpler than doing nothing.  But alas it’s too late for simple because Democrats already set us on the wrong path by ignoring the Constitution and failing to answer the question correctly.  The flow chart cannot be held responsible for human error, and since we have unnecessarily complicated our lives the extrication will be more complicated than it should have been and yet it still will be exponentially simpler than continuing down the wrong path as I will demonstrate shortly.

If the correct answer is “No,” then the next step is easy and clear:

 

“But what about the millions of people who are going to be uninsured now?!” some will whine.

Go back to your fundamental question:  Is it the federal government’s constitutional responsibility to ensure every American has healthcare?

The answer is still “No,” and it must remain “No” no matter how much whining and how many tragedies are predicted to occur as a consequence of following the Constitution.  There is no caveat in the Constitution that says, “Follow these rules unless some people are unhappy.”  People who are getting free or subsidized healthcare at someone else’s expense are always going to be unhappy when that’s taken away.  The solution is to create a new path that makes healthcare affordable for those who are willing to earn it rather than giving up and continuing down the wrong path.  Either the free market and/or the states will provide the solutions people need with respect to healthcare if we just get the federal government out of the way, which leads me to the next step in our flowchart: 

 

Sadly this step would not be necessary if not for the fact that Congress has ignored the Constitution so many times up to this point, but alas it has and so it complicates what would otherwise be a simple flowchart.

Finally, I’d like to suggest one more step:

 

This is the one thing the federal government could do to facilitate the free market process of healthcare delivery, because as it stands now we are expected to be consumers in a market where we are virtually blind, and this puts us at an impossible disadvantage.  If the government can dictate that McDonalds has to publish the calorie count of a Big Mac for the good of the consumer, then certainly a much greater good yet would be to ensure consumers have the tools they need to make informed choices about healthcare services.  That should be the extent of the federal government’s involvement, in my humble opinion.

The last box in the “No” path of the flowchart would therefore be:

 

See how simple that was even with having to fix our prior missteps?  Okay, it won’t be simple because there are a lot of missteps to undo along the way, but at least the path is clear, which is much more than we can say now.  We know how to get from here to there if only we stay focused on our fundamental question:   Is it the federal government’s constitutional responsibility to ensure every American has healthcare?  And stay firm on the answer:  No.

Now let’s consider what the flowchart looks like if we answer incorrectly, i.e. “Yes” (and let me say that if you answered “Yes” you’re not a conservative).  Imagine a long series of flowchart boxes, one after another, with laws and regulations you’re already familiar with:  EMTALA, Medicaid legislation, Obamacare…..plus a whole lot more to come as the powers that be stumble around attempting to fix the inevitable failures of these misguided laws with yet more misguided laws.  Skipping to the end of the flowchart here’s what you’ll find:

 

That’s right.  If you incorrectly answer “Yes” to the question of whether the federal government is responsible to ensure that all Americans have healthcare, the “Yes” path can only lead to one place:   socialized medicine,  and all that this implies:  the shortages, the long waits, costs based not on what service you received but on how much money you make, and the worst thing of all:  people forced to participate against their will.  Is this what Republicans want?  We could go through it step by step but why should that be necessary?  We already know what happens as a consequence of answering “Yes” when we should have answered “No.”  We have history to look upon, and what’s that famous quote about failing to learn the lessons of history?  History is too often forgotten, just like the Constitution.

There’s so much more to say and I could go on, but for now, as my old friend Mrs. AL used to say, just munge on that for a while.

~CW

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