health care — VOICES for REASON

Throughout the health care debate, we have been arguing that the push for government control of health care is driven by a certain moral view: the view that need is a claim. That view is typically taken to be noble and benevolent, and one of Ayn Rand’s most controversial conclusions is that it is in fact vicious and unjust. Well, the latest proposal out of Massachusetts seems designed to prove Rand’s point.

Massachusetts, you probably know, passed a bill very similar to ObamaCare a few years back. Well, shocking news: the state is now hemorrhaging money. To stop the bleeding, it is clamping down on doctor reimbursements for Medicare and Medicaid, which has meant fewer and fewer doctors willing to accept Medicare/Medicaid patients. The state’s solution? Force them.

Every health care provider licensed in the commonwealth which provides covered services to a person covered under “Affordable Health Plans” must provide such service to any such person, as a condition of their licensure, and must accept payment at the lowest of the statutory reimbursement rate…

As one doctor noted: Read the rest of this entry »

In response to a recent post called “Who cares about the doctors?” I received several thoughtful comments, including two that recounted poignant personal stories. As you read this first comment, ask yourself whether ObamaCare and the whole federal-state medical regulatory system treats physicians with the respect they deserve:

My wife did a mid-life career change from power systems engineer to doctor (ER). It was a family decision. We put our own savings and investments on the line to bet on her ability to take our family to the next level of success in America. We did this willingly, as free people intending to enjoy the fruits of our labors. When I look back at the amount of time, sacrifice and work it took from all of us, most of all my wife, to get to this point, the action of the Obama administration is breathtaking in its sense of entitlement to her labor and its arrogance in assuming that the doctors will go along.

Most doctors already willingly donate their time, money and labor to treat the poor. When it is no longer their decision where to apply their labor, then we have lost the country.

But of course, it’s not just the Obama administration that displays a “sense of entitlement to her labor.” For decades, both political parties have displayed “arrogance in assuming that the doctors will go along.” Now the question is: Will doctors keep “going along,” or will they start standing up for their rights? Listen to another physician expressing a sense of personal loss: Read the rest of this entry »

Many of the opponents of ObamaCare objected to it on the grounds that it didn’t reflect the “will of the people”–as if the biggest problem with herding doctors and patients into a government health care system was that too few Americans supported the herding.

Well, wouldn’t you know it: “More Americans now favor than oppose the health care overhaul that President Obama signed into law Tuesday, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds.”

Whatever the accuracy of the poll, trying to defend health care freedom on the grounds of public opinion is to place health care freedom on a foundation of shifting sand. As the founders warned us, the majority can be as great a threat to individual rights as a minority; Patrick Henry didn’t say, “Give me liberty…so long as 51% of Americans approve.”

We at VfR, on the other hand, continue to oppose ObamaCare on the grounds that it is a rights-violating, immoral monstrosity.

Amid the clamorous debate over health care, how much have you heard from the doctors? Very little. Nobody’s particularly interested in what they have to say. It’s taken for granted that they’ll always be there when you need them.

These are the forgotten men and women of American health care. They stand to one side, mostly silent, while self-important politicians noisily debate how to allocate “access” to health care. These legislators hold showy “summit” meetings of “stakeholders,” where doctors are outnumbered by the poor, the uninsured, the already-sick, the health insurers, the drug companies, and big corporations like Walmart. In this political universe of warring pressure groups, no tiny minority can expect to have much influence—even the minority that provides the services everyone is clamoring for.

Since professional organizations like the American Medical Association won’t rise to their members’ defense, it falls to the rest of us—those whose very lives may depend on a physician’s skill and dedication—to consider some pointed questions our leaders won’t ask: Read the rest of this entry »

A recent WSJ article provides a stomach-turning play-by-play of the Democrats’ health care coup:

It was dirty deals, open threats, broken promises and disregard for democracy that pulled ObamaCare to this point, and yesterday the same machinations pushed it across the finish line.

And that’s not even the half of it. ObamaCare was the wayward child of every conceivable (and inconceivable) pressure group fighting by any means necessary for whatever short-range benefit it could grab: from health insurance companies looking to gain customers at the point of a gun to businesses looking to foist their health care costs onto taxpayers; from prestige-seeking politicians looking to build an historical legacy to political hucksters who opposed ObamaCare on principle until the price was right. And let’s not forget the largest pressure group behind ObamaCare: those seeking to extract unearned health care from the young, healthy, and rich.

This was pressure group total war.

But pressure groups are only a symptom. The source of pressure group warfare is today’s mixed economy, where the government has expansive power to intervene in the economy. Read the rest of this entry »

According to Nancy Pelosi, the House’s passage of the new health care bill is utterly in keeping with the founding principles of this country. In passing ObamaCare, she said,

we will honor the vows of our founders, who in the Declaration of Independence said that we are ‘endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’ This legislation will lead to healthier lives, more liberty to pursue hopes and dreams and happiness for the American people. This is an American proposal that honors the traditions of our country.

I have a question. Speaker Pelosi, if government-provided health care is essential to “the vows of our founders,” then why didn’t they put it in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution–or even discuss putting it there? Did they simply fail to draw out this subtle implication of their theory?

Hardly. The ideal of government-provided health care, aka a “right” to health care, is in complete contradiction to the proper understanding of rights put forward by the Founding Fathers. This is why the acknowledged “father of the Constitution” James Madison said “Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government” and “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re told that ObamaCare aims to make health care more affordable to more people, but in fact it threatens the rights of everyone involved in health care—doctors, patients, and health insurers—and thus the future of the industry.

Before Congress greases up yet another ramp on the already slippery slope toward socialized medicine, let’s pause to identify those endangered rights and some of the destructive consequences.

• Insurance companies are profit-making businesses, not social welfare agencies. They have the right to charge premiums that reflect actual risk. But ObamaCare would force them to cover almost every American—no matter how sick they already are, no matter how bad their health habits, no matter how high the cost of their exotic treatments–and to raise everyone’s premiums accordingly.

• Doctors are morally entitled to regard themselves as profit-making professionals, not public servants. They have the right to charge fees that reflect the value received by all parties to the transaction. But ObamaCare, by driving down permissible fees, will force physicians into a deadly conflict of interest: Either lose money by doing everything necessary to meet patients’ needs, or make money by satisfying some minimum bureaucratic standard.

• Patients are sovereign individuals, not particles in a social organism. They have the right to buy all the health care they deem necessary and can afford, without apologizing to those who can’t afford it. But under ObamaCare, patients will have the moral status of beggars at a soup kitchen who must uncomplainingly accept whatever gruel from the health-care pot happens to land in their dish.

Let ObamaCare be seen for what it is: yet another offensive in the long-running assault on individual rights in medicine.

Image: WikiMedia Commons

The White house says we “just can’t wait” for its government solution to our health care problems. But today’s health-care problems were created by yesterday’s government “solutions.” Since the 1940s, on the idea that health care is a “right” that others must provide, the government has made a growing number of Americans collectively responsible for each other’s care–through Medicare, Medicaid, and collectivized employer plans. These government programs incentivized people to spend much, much more on health care–since they were spending other people’s money–and warped the market. Without such intervention, we should expect health care to be like laser eye-surgery, which is not covered by Medicare or government insurance laws, but gets better and cheaper all the time.

America “can’t wait”—for the government to get out of health care. Disentangling government from that field is the task of true reform.

Image: SXC: kikashi

Americans are understandably disgusted by all the shenanigans going on in the halls of Congress, as Pelosi races to pass ObamaCare by any means possible. But if you want to know why ObamaCare supporters hardly blush at employing heavy-handed tactics, it’s because they regard the bill’s aim as morally noble–and believe this sanitizes the sordid means by which they hope to achieve it.

As the President put it in a recent health care speech, “we are all in this together.” In America, he said, when “fortunes turn against one of us, others are there to lend a helping hand,” but “sometimes government has to step in to help deliver on that promise.” Obama was echoing the ethical premise he has uttered many times before: you are your brother’s keeper, and his health care needs are your responsibility.

But as ARC’s Yaron Brook and I argued in a recent op-ed, you are not your brother’s health care provider: Read the rest of this entry »

Nicholas Kristof gives us his best case for passing ObamaCare:

Critics doubt that the Senate and House bills would succeed in containing health care costs very much, and they may be right. It’s hard to know. But the existing system is a runaway roller coaster. Isn’t it prudent to try brake pedals even if we’re not sure how well they’ll work?

You’ve got to love likening a sprawling new government program to further bureaucratize, politicize and intervene in American health care to putting on the brakes.

No, Kristof, I don’t think it’s particularly prudent to expand government’s control over health care based on nothing but the blind hope it will work; I don’t think it’s prudent to approach any problem without understanding the nature of that problem. Read the rest of this entry »