Walter Williams has a couple of solid articles about Free Health Care and Socialism in general. This article on the (lack of a) car insurance crisis is an amusing read as well. Although critics of my last blurb on free health care would have you believe that I am heartless, soulless, and greedy, Williams strikes a chord with me when he says, “Reaching into one’s own pocket to assist his fellow man is noble and worthy of praise. Reaching into another person’s pocket to assist one’s fellow man is despicable and worthy of condemnation.”
I’m not averse to charity. I am in favor of charity, and give with a glad heart. I have been blessed, and my Christian faith lights a fire in me to give back from that blessing. It’s not that I don’t want to enrich and enable those who have fallen on hard times, it’s that I don’t think the government is the proper venue for it. It’s that programs like this focus on symptoms, and perpetuate them. Poverty is not caused by a lack of money. A lack of health care isn’t the problem, it’s the lack of means to get health care that’s the problem. This breaks down into employability and affordability. Reforms are needed to make health care more affordable – government CAN accomplish this. Assistance is needed to prepare people to find employment that will either provide health care or pay enough that they can afford health care. Private charities can accomplish this far better than monolithic government programs.
Williams mentions corporate handouts as wrong in the same vein, and I agree fully with him. Taking money from one group and handing it to another is immoral, and often degenerates into buying votes (BOTH parties do this, sadly). If you have such a burden for the plight of certain people in certain circumstances, open up your wallet and give. I’ll do the same.
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Not sure how providing health care is enriching people.
By law, nobody can be denied medical care at a hospital (maybe even a doctor? don’t know) so I don’t think the problem is a means to get health care. It is the insurance companies double dipping. They make a killing on rising malpractice insurance costs AND rising health care insurance costs that are caused by the malpractice costs. People says that it is the lawyers but in Florida where I live, the malpractice awards have actually decreased while the insurance costs have risen by like 400%.
I wouldn’t call paying over $1000 a year for my family’s car insurance a crisis but it is disgusting considering I have never been in a single accident.
Socialized medicine does work. There is already a form of it in this country. I think it is safe to say that most people (including you and me) can’t afford health care. That is why we have a privatized socialized health care system. It is called HMO’s. The payment gets deducted from your paycheck (kind of like a tax!?) You hear the same horror stories from the HMO’s that you do coming from countries with socialized medicine. Patient X couldn’t get approved for surgery Y in time.
Btw, What my company paid for my family’s insurance last year was more than we paid in income tax (~$9,600) ~800/month for an HMO.
Much of our current problems and receptiveness to (government) socialized health care has to do with the idea we got somewhere along the way that it’s not our responsibility to provide for our own health care. It’s our employers’ job, and if that fails, it’s government’s job.
Step A1 toward improving out health care system would be to make personal purchase of health insurance 100% tax deductible. There’s no good reason why this can’t and shouldn’t be done immediately. Failure to roll this back puts any individually purchased plan at an unfair advantage. Then, unshackle the ability of insurers to offer association health plans, providing some advantages of group plans to individual buyers.
Individually purchased plans could also have the advantage of CHOICE for Americans. When I buy car insurance, I get massive discounts for higher deductibles. I wouldn’t mind being able to choose a $100 deductible on my health insurance – most families can afford the $100 doctor’s visit. It’s the $100,000 emergency that will cripple them financially. Under the current system, I’ll never get that choice.
If we made health insurance 100% tax deductible then I would pay no income taxes. We are a typical middle class family. So what were you saying about costing trillions?Individual health insurance does provide those choices. It is called catastrophic health insurance. I have gotten that in the past. It is the *only* affordable way to get individual health insurance outside of a plan. The insurance companies aren’t shackled, they choose to exploit people who don’t have the advantage of being part of a group plan. I know its difficult for a right wing extremist to imagine a business *gasp* exploiting people but it does happen 😉
What’s the difference between your health insurance and group insurance (from a taxability perspective)? I’m not talking about a tax CREDIT, just tax deductible. I don’t see the math as to how health insurance costs could POSSIBLY eliminate your full tax liability. Suppose an annual income of $36,000 – even weekly insurance costs of $200 would result in federal withholding + FICA of $95. Hardly an upper class income or zero income tax. Another $800/month in mortgage interest deductions STILL doesn’t exempt you from federal withholding. ($30/wk tax alone)
If catastrophic health insurance is available to individuals, where is the crisis? How much is it? If someone is unable to afford this, I suspect they can benefit from existing programs designed to help poor families. If they are unwilling to plan for this, that frankly isn’t my problem. Irresponsible behavior must not be rewarded, otherwise why should anyone try to be responsible? Public programs shouldn’t subsidize people with the means to protect themselves but don’t. (This applies to bailing out businesses as well, BTW – as Williams points out).
I would submit to you that the state of non-group insurance is the result of mutual exploitation. If there are truly so few regulations on insurance companies, and most current companies exploit non-group individuals, why has no competitor arisen to fill this gap? I suspect because there are also individuals who seek such insurance and attempt to hide a serious medical condition in order to take advantage of the company. I accept that some companies can and do abuse individuals. What I find difficult to believe is that ALL businesses do so.
I don’t see the crisis that dictates we should all run to the government, begging for them to solve our health care problems.
You probably don’t see a crises because you have a job that pays for your health insurance. I do now but I have worked as a contractor where I didn’t get health insurance. I believe that if you want a nice car and a nice house and cable tv. Then you should have to work to get those things. That is the American way. However, I believe that every single person is entitled to health care. It is like law-enforcement, and public schools. By your reasoning, we should hire a private detective when we are victims of crime instead of relying on the police. The government provides mutally beneficial services to the community where as a group we can do better than we could as individuals (which happens to be the way that health insurance works now) I feel that health care is one of those services.
Sorry, you are right about the tax deductions. For some reason I was thinking that the deduction is from the taxes when the deduction is actually from the income.