Single payer government health care as an incentive to bold entrepreneurship

by Glen Wallace

From the perspective of what I like to call 'applied social political philosophy', I prefer to bypass the whole debate about whether health care is a privilege or a right that the state is obligated to provide.  Instead, I ask the question, is a society that provides universal health care coverage achieving an ideal compared to a society that doesn't?  Can that ideal be practically achieved using a reasonable level of human and material resources?  If the answer to those two questions is 'yes', then proceed with taking steps towards the state providing universal coverage.  If there isn't yet sufficient support from the constituents for such coverage, then proceed with arguments and facts to sway them otherwise.

Regarding any counter arguments about government coverage leading to complacency, I think the facts and reasons point in the opposite direction.  If memory serves me correctly, I believe I read a statistic that European nations are greatly outpacing the U.S. in rates of business startups.  And given that universal single payer coverage is much more common in Europe, it would stand to reason that that difference is a fundamental reason for Europe besting the U.S. in such bootstrapping.  That's because here in America, the worker is much too dependent on their employer for health care coverage and thus discouraged from even dipping their feet into the business startup waters.  

Compare the American worker with dreams of starting their own business but are wary of leaving their employer with its comfortable health insurance coverage with the Scandinavian worker who knows they and their family would be assured of health care coverage whether their business startup idea works or not.  Our system of private insurance, generally provided through employment, acts as a disincentive to bold entrepreneurship.  Conversely, a single payer universal coverage system, by limiting risk, would act as an incentive to the sorts of bold bootstrapping that built the United States business empire -- an empire that is now showing signs of flagging compared with the rest of the developed word that wisely provides universal healthcare coverage.

Individual Mandate Requirement Makes Some Unsafe Assumptions

By Glen Wallace,

Regarding the health insurance mandate there is a couple of problems.  First there is the assumption that health insurance is, and will continue to be, the primary method of payment for healthcare for the vast majority of citizens.  That may be the current fact but there is no assurance that health insurance would continue to be the choice method of payment for the vast majority if there was no mandate in place.  Perhaps the citizenry might decide a whole new methodology for payment, such as barter, would work better.   In issuing the mandate then, congress would be interfering with interstate commerce by acting as an impediment to the organic flow of free market decision making.

But even if we did take as a given that health insurance will remain popular in the future, the mandate does not provide allowance for those that do not want to utilize the modern western medical system.  Some individuals may believe that holistic medicine is the superior method of medical treatment.  Those people may be so successful with that treatment that they never need to utilize the western medical system.  They wouldn't then have ever opted in to the medical market system that is part of interstate commerce but are instead forced into it by the individual mandate.

While the comparison is made to the so-called superior court's decision to forbid farmers from eating their own harvest with the healthcare mandate, in the case of the farmers, while I disagree with that decision by the court, there is an important difference with the farmers insofar as in that case I believe only the farmers that have already opted into the futures market for their crops are the one's who are forbidden the freedom to consume their own crops (at least I hope it is limited to those farmers as I'm not that familiar with this particular court decision).  In the case of the healthcare mandate, on the other hand, all citizens are not afforded the opportunity to decide to opt in, but instead are forced into the insurance market by the government.  The human, then has been turned into a health insurance market commodity, just like soybeans and corn are in the agricultural market, whether that individual human likes it or not.

 While I believe socialism has its place and can be beneficial, especially in the case of medicine, I don't believe crony capitalism ever has a place in
socioeconomic systems.  The healthcare mandate is the ultimate in crony capitalism since the government is requiring that every individual buy a particular
product from a private company.  It seems like with the mandate, human beings are being treated by the government as a commodity for the health insurance industry.  We are being forced to make ourselves available as tradable assets on the health insurance market whether we like it or not.  

Obamacare is Not Socialized Medicine, But I Wish it Were

By Glen Wallace

While I have no doubt that they have the best of intentions, I think it is unfortunate that the progressive set has now seen it as their duty to rally in support and defend Obamacare as thought it were this great compassionate improvement in the current state of affairs.  I think the only solution that progressive minded folk should see as acceptable is a single payer government run universal plan that is modeled after the best run plans of northern Europe.

The Hillarycare plan would have been much more like the European single payer model, and therefore I really wish it would have succeeded.   With hindsight they should have been able to come up with a better way to sell the plan to the public.  What they could do now is have their own 'there's got to be a better way' commercial like the insurance companies put out against the plan, but this time the government could put out their own commercials supporting the plan using real people recounting their health insurance horror stories from dealing with medical debt they incurred from either high deductibles or cases where the insurance company has weaseled out of paying for hospital bills.  At the end of the commercial they would say "there's got to be a better way..... but wait, there is, and they're already doing it over in Europe and Canada."

I heard on public radio that two thirds of all American's with medical debt had health insurance when they incurred the debt.  One person that they had featured on the radio program with medical debt, who had health insurance, was battling with the billing hospital and health insurance company because the insurance company claimed some of the billed care he received from the hospital was not covered.  Trying to get either the hospital to remove the charges or get the insurance company to pay for them, had become a full time job for this guy who was still recovering from the motorcycle accident that caused the very costly hospital stay where the bills got run up in the first place.  Not only would all these problems go away for the individual with a universal single payer plan, but implementing such a plan would remove a huge costly burden from employers that would likely free up some money to hire more employees and expand a business.  It seems like the single payer plan is such a win-win that it should practically sell itself.  Perhaps we as a country need to get over our aversion to particular terms such as 'socialism' and become more pragmatic and simply choose the ideal solution regardless of what label applies to it.