Krauthammer Nails It – Draconian Health Insurance Regulation

I’m a capitalist, not a socialist. I’m a centrist, not a liberal or libertarian. I’m definitely not a Republican or a conservative, but I want this country to achieve a public health insurance policy that actually works, not pie in the sky wishful thinking. I don’t want it to bankrupt the country or any industry that employs millions of people. I want a bipartisan approach to solving the problem; that way, maybe some common sense will prevail.

Charles Krauthammer, a Conservative OpEd columnist for the Washington Post and a frequent guest on Fox News (among other Republican news sources), had this piece published by WaPo August 28, about three days ago. With the title, “Obamacare: The Only Exit Strategy,” I was intrigued.  However, I’ve become pretty jaded with OpEd pieces on Health Care and Health Insurance lately. I’m getting sick to death of it!

I read through the opening paragraphs, blah blah, more criticism and advice for Obama on how to salvage this program, and more strident predictions of what will happen in Congress. I’ve seen plenty of this stuff before.

But this I like! What really made me sit up and pay attention was this, the last item in his numbered list:

5) Promise nothing but pleasure — for now. Make health insurance universal and permanently protected. Tear up the existing bills and write a clean one — Obamacare 2.0 — promulgating draconian health-insurance regulation [emphasis added] that prohibits (a) denying coverage for preexisting conditions, (b) dropping coverage if the client gets sick and (c) capping insurance company reimbursement.

What’s not to like? If you have insurance, you’ll never lose it. Nor will your children ever be denied coverage for preexisting conditions.

I like the concept. I hate the insurance industry, kind of like I hate slaughterhouses, but I honestly can’t take the position that health insurance should be abolished. There are millions of people making a living in that industry, and most of them are not rich by any stretch. At a time when the need for jobs outweighs all other considerations as our nation’s top priority, in my opinion, I can’t endorse killing any particular industry, no matter how loathsome it is to some people.

And if you are honest with yourself, you can’t possibly think insurance is all bad. There are few alternatives in our society that will protect the average person from catastrophic medical costs if that emergency arises. It’s commonplace to hear people say, “Thank God I had insurance!” When you hear of someone suffering an injury or losing their home in a disaster, the first words friends are likely to say are, “You’re insured, aren’t you?” Or when a traffic accident occurs, what a relief to be able to simply exchange insurance info with the other party, rather than having to hire an attorney to settle the damages.

Private insurance is fraught with abuses, to be sure. And the outrageous salaries and bonuses at some companies are scandalous. But insurance as a concept is a pretty good idea: pooling resources to individually protect those who are in the pool. This is the basis of most business enterprises, from partnerships to public corporations. It’s the basis of taxes to pay for necessary functions of society. And it’s the basis of how families function.

As we search for a better way to provide health coverage for all our citizens, let’s not put a whole industry out of business. We need every job we can muster in this country right now.

It would be better to do as Krauthammer suggests, I think, and that is to heavily regulate health insurance companies. As he explains:

The regulated insurance companies will get two things in return. Government will impose an individual mandate that will force the purchase of health insurance on the millions of healthy young people who today forgo it. And government will subsidize all the others who are too poor to buy health insurance. The result? Two enormous new revenue streams created by government for the insurance companies.

If this can be made to work, I can’t think of any reasonable argument the insurance companies can make against it. And as Hillary Clinton always pointed out, paraphrasing, if everyone is insured, the pool is large enough to protect the insurer, which in turn can bring down the cost of premiums.

He continues:

And here’s what makes it so politically seductive: The end result is the liberal dream of universal and guaranteed coverage — but without overt nationalization. It is all done through private insurance companies. Ostensibly private. They will, in reality, have been turned into government utilities. No longer able to control whom they can enroll, whom they can drop and how much they can limit their own liability, they will live off government largess — subsidized premiums from the poor; forced premiums from the young and healthy.

It’s the perfect finesse — government health care by proxy. And because it’s proxy, and because it will guarantee access to (supposedly) private health insurance — something that enjoys considerable Republican support — it will pass with wide bipartisan backing and give Obama a resounding political victory.

Well, I don’t give a flying F*** about Obama’s need for a victory, but if it gets bipartisan approval, I’m very interested. Even optimistic.

I can’t help but think a profit motive for insurance providers would be a safer step at this point than the government administering health plans directly.  Our government budget is already insanely out of whack. The Treasury is a sea of red ink. It’s obvious bureaucrats can’t manage money as well as the capitalists.

But like anything political, there are more opinions than there are people. And for every action, there is a reaction. So before we jump to conclusions, let’s allow Krauthammer to finish his point:

Isn’t there a catch? Of course there is. This scheme is the ultimate bait-and-switch. The pleasure comes now, the pain later. Government-subsidized universal and virtually unlimited coverage will vastly compound already out-of-control government spending on health care. The financial and budgetary consequences will be catastrophic.

However, they will not appear immediately. And when they do, the only solution will be rationing. That’s when the liberals will give the FCCCER [President Obama's Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research] regulatory power and give you end-of-life counseling.

But by then, resistance will be feeble. Why? Because at that point the only remaining option will be to give up the benefits we will have become accustomed to. Once granted, guaranteed universal health care is not relinquished. Look at Canada. Look at Britain. They got hooked; now they ration. So will we.

I completely agree that once an entitlement program is started, you can’t unring the bell. That’s why we must be extremely cautious about enacting a new, incredibly huge, entitlement program. The burden on the budget will be bad enough if done as he suggests, with the government propping up only those who can’t pay insurance premiums to private insurers. It would be a million times worse if government employees are running the whole show. I’m convinced of that.

We already have a shortage of doctors and nurses, especially general practitioners. And most med school grads want to make good money, so they specialize. The capitalistic system allows them to reap the rewards of their 12-years of college. How many will go that distance for a government paycheck?

To meet the demand of either a public option or single payer, we’d have to start licensing nurse-practitioners by the millions to staff government-run clinics around the clock. Seven years of college instead of twelve, for example. Or maybe less, as the needs increase. And none of that fancy hospital lab equipment for these clinics. They won’t be able to afford it.

Hate it all you like, but the capitalistic approach to health care has led to the incredible advances we have seen in nearly all areas of medicine. Private health insurance has played a large role in financing the process, even though we all know of horror stories about insurance companies. But still, they have prospered and most people benefit from it.

Insurance companies can be regulated, and they should be.  I believe that even with “draconian regulation,” they will be prosperous and employ millions. And we will have the protections we deserve.

Inside of a decade, government-run insurance and/or health care can become bankrupt, mediocre, or both. If anyone can do it, the government can!