Free Health Care may not be free. by Sterling
(libertarian)
Friday, December 14, 2007
Free Health Care
Each year around this time, the company I work for starts putting out news items and mailings about how the price of health care keeps going up, how the price of prescription drugs keeps going up, and how we all are living longer...driving the price of both up. This is probably all true, but it is designed to lay the ground work for raising co-pays and price tags in our benefits program.
Now realistically I don't necessarily have a problem for paying the going rate for medical coverage. I mean the alternative is not very appealing! But I do pay it. I roll out of bed every morning at 6am, get dressed, make my coffee, and drive the 28 miles to my office and put in 10 hours a day to earn the money to cover this benefit.
If Uncle Sam in all his beneficence guaranteed that no matter what stupid choices I made, I could still go to the Doctor for free and get my problems solved on the government's dime, why would I still go to work? Rather than getting up way before the sun, scraping the ice and snow off my car, bobbing and weaving through rush hour traffic to my employers facilities, I could simply sleep in - maybe make a few stock trades, write a couple of free-lance articles, and generally slack off. Think about it...multiply this point of view by all the tens of thousands of engineers, actuaries, accountants, analyst across America.
The law of unintended consequences is very unpredictable. Universal Health Care sounds so humanitarian. Who could be against printing a few more fake dollars to "pay" for the medical expenses of the uninsured? That might work out well for them, but it also may take out several million people from the work force that go to work each day to make sure they and their families have health insurance. If they don't go to work, what happens next?
Chairman
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I would have to disagree with you on that point. Let me first say that I am fully against universal healthcare, but for different reasons.
In your article your stating, basically, that the only reason you go to work is for health care benefits. If health care were free, then you and scores of others would not show up to work. Maybe if housing, food, healthcare, power, and clothing were all free this would be the case.
In actuality, universal healthcare would create a larger percentage of money coming out of your paycheck than what you pay for yourself, or your family. So, in the long run you would have to wake up earlier, work 12-14 hours a day, and not have time to even write one free lance article.
While I partially agree with AJ - some folk might still go to work - I think that for the work force to loose all the others who wouldn't (especially you!) would be a shame! :)
those are simplistic views of a complex issue.
fixing health care is needed, just about everyone but the insurance industry and some lobbiest would aggree with me.
How to do it ?
first Mandating folks to sign up to an insuranse plan -
this is the insurance companies dream. "goverment mandated policies"
they lobbied this deal to Rommney and he took it hook line and sinker. the idea they said is that they are losing money on the uninsured. So they pithched that if they had more policies that that would offset their costs and that would keep prices low,...yea right
Bottom line on that one is the middle class Joe making over $40K who elected to go without is now forcded to subsidise a insurance company ,..BLAH
Most of the candidates with the exception of Kusinch are preaching that plan.
In my opinion we building on excisting framework is a mistake
we need to find a system in another country that is working and start a move towards it
Little fixes or no fixes wont do here,...we got big problems
