In an alternate reality where Obamacare became law five years sooner than it did, would my third child be dead? Given that Seattle Children's Hospital has been dropped by many insurances because of Obamacare incentives, I'd suspect so. Jerome Jerome the Metronome had heart surgery at Children's Mercy Hospital of Kansas City when he was one month old. What would happen today?
Insurance only works mathematically for large-cost, randomly-occurring contingencies. This is why people buy fire insurance for their homes and not lawn maintenance insurance. Medical insurance has been required by law to cover many things that don't fit the large-cost, randomly-occurring criteria (such as hair prosthetics and wellness checkups). The very insurance plans that DO fit the model have been outlawed by Obamacare because the young and healthy who only need catastrophic coverage must be required to buy coverage they don't want or need to provide the money to cover everyone else. This is why I recently received notice that, for the second time in three years, my insurance plan is illegal and will be discontinued. My insurance premiums have literally doubled since 2006, and if I buy another plan to replace the one that's being taken away from me this time, my premiums will rise more.
I was not a morally-hazardous free-rider; I bought insurance for myself like a responsible person. I can no longer afford that. Obamacare has dramatically reduced my family's financial well-being. This isn't a racist response to a black president, as Oprah Winfrey insists. I have been intentionally impoverished and rendered unemployable by a president with outright contempt for individualist Americans and the Constitution they were left by their forebears. Now we're learning that my children's safety and well-being has been reduced by the president's signature legislation.
His race isn't a factor in that. In fact, those who deny there is any reason to oppose Obama aside from racism are showing that they cannot conceive of Obama as HAVING policies or programs or behaviors or ideologies that might be a basis for opposition. If he doesn't have any reason to oppose him other than his race, he must not have anything AT ALL other than his race. They have reduced the president to nothing but a black man. They racistly objectify him, then loudly accuse others of that very behavior.
So where do I get off complaining about something that "levels the playing field" if I'm so interested in Zion?
First, I support the reduction of inequality through voluntary methods. I believe for us to answer before God for our stewardships, we must have individual command of resources. I believe in private property. Property laws must be respected, which means the transfer from the rich to the poor must be voluntary.
Second, this law was sold as a correction for those who don't have insurance. Why don't they have insurance? Either they don't want it or they can't get it. If they don't want it, respect for private property requires us to allow them to not have it. If they can't get it, why can't they get it? We were told it was because of insurance company restrictions on "pre-existing conditions." But remember what I said earlier about "randomly-occurring contingencies." If you already HAVE cancer, cancer is no longer a randomly-occurring contingency. There's no probability to plug in to the formula; you have cancer with probability P = 1, so P falls out and your costs are your costs. Insurance isn't supposed to spread your bill around--it's not a fancy version of passing around the hat.
The problems with insurance came from government involvement. Costs were rising because of government requirements that insurance cover treatments that don't require insurance, and people with pre-existing conditions were moving from insurance to insurance because of employment decisions, but insurance was only offered through work because of World-War-Two wage freezes. I need food every day but I don't expect my job to be involved, so why would my job provide my insurance? Monetize insurance benefits and have employees buy catastrophic insurance in a private marketplace and pay for all medical care outside of large-cost, randomly-occurring contingencies. Prohibit insurers from dropping customers after diagnoses, and provide socialized catastrophic care to those who currently have pre-existing conditions (estimated at less than 100,000 people). Eliminate Medicare, as the entire program is based on a flawed assumption of geriatric poverty (the elderly are the richest among us, else whence retirement?). This collection of changes is the correction to the health insurance problem.
This isn't just libertarian laissez-faire thinking. It involves socialized medicine and insurance regulation. But it also reduces what insurance is called upon to do, and empowers individuals to make their own healthcare choices.
These reforms would probably have to go hand-in-hand with tax reform, as most people would see a large increase in their salary if their employer-provided health insurance were monetized. Instead of creating tax-free accounts and exemptions for healthcare spending, complicating the tax code, a simplification would be in order. But tax questions shouldn't stand in the way of this health insurance correction. This year people like me on the private market are losing their health insurance; next year it will be the other 90% of insured Americans when the employee mandate kicks in. There's time to fix this, but it will have to be done over the veto of the president. I don't believe that's likely, and that's why next year when your insurance is cancelled you're going to understand what I already know: this president is a terrible threat to your health and economic well-being, irrespective of his race.
via oneofthebest
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