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We already have universal healthcare…
By sage of monticello | July 11, 2007
First, let me clarify. By universal health care I don’t mean everyone has health insurance provided by the government. This type of universal health care is the type that so many of our favorite Democrat Presidential candidates endorse as a means to an electoral end.
However, in another sense, and as the post below correctly points out, we already have univeral health care (to a degree). Correct me if I am wrong, but anybody at anytime, regardless of your health insurance status, can receive health care in an emergency room. The costs of treated the uninsured are then distributed across the wide spectrum of those who do have health insurance in the form of higher prices for medical services and insurance.
This is similar to other social welfare programs in the sense the wealth is redistributed, the only difference is that instead of government redistributing the wealth the government requires hospitals to do it. Statutorily speaking, government has made every hospital in this country its medical welfare surrogate.
I had a professor tell me that our society’s approach to crime was all wrong. He asked me to imagine that crime in this country was a faucet with water uncontrollably pouring out of it. Our current approach to crime, he said, was to clean up the mess; when the better approach would be to turn off the facet.
My professor’s approach to the problem of criminality seems appropriately applied to the problem of emergency room visits driving up the cost of health care: turn off the faucet.
The way I see it, there are two ways to solve the problem of guaranteeing treatment to the uninsured by statutorily requiring hospitals to treat those patients. One is to turn off the faucet. The other is socialized medicine. Which would you choose?
I really would like some feedback, because when I spoke to my dad (who is conservative) about ending free emergency room care for those who cannot pay based on conservative political philosophy (it is not right to make those who can pay, pay for those who can’t pay) and political effectiveness (drives up costs) he made my approach sound heartless and impractical.
So, what do you think?
In light of the topic of this post I would like to present a related post by David Berstein of Volokh Conspiracy:
Universal Health Care: Some comments to Ilya’s post on Brink Lindsey reminded me that I get puzzled when I see libertarian and conservative think tanks (and individuals) go ballistic whenever anyone suggests having the government require “universal health care.” See, e.g., the controversies in Massachusetts and California. It seems to me we already have universal health care; by federal statute, anyone has the right to show up at any hospital emergency room in the country, and get whatever care they need regardless of their ability to pay.
Now, admittedly, this is an especially dumb kind of universal health care, because it neglects primary care, focuses on especially expensive emergency care, and turns emergency rooms into family physician’s office (except, to avoid draconian liability under federal law, emergency rooms will be much more eager to order every possible test under the sun, lest they be accused of neglected their federal law obligations). The costs of such care, along with whatever other costs to the health care system the uninsured are able to pass on (bills not paid, contagious diseases spread, whatever), are paid by the rest of us, as surely as if they came out of the tax system.
Moreover, healthy individuals who rely on the safety net for their care instead of paying for their own insurance (as well as employers who don’t provide insurance) are free-riding on the rest of us. I’m against socialized medicine, and I’m against a single-payer system, (and I’m against Medicare for that matter, which not only subsidizes many well-off rich, but could hardly be better designed to waste money if it were done intentionally), but I simply can’t get up in arms about “universal health care.”
We have a version of it already, but it’s just a stupid and counterproductive version, and I’m willing to listen to alternatives that are less costly and more efficient, even if it means that the government is more directly involved, as with employer mandates.
Topics: health care, conservativism |
