Faith Revolution

Ok, Kimmy!  I’ll bite and respond to your question on possible solutions to the healthcare issue.  But don’t get mad if I bore you to death.

Let’s begin with the purpose of insurance.  What is insurance?  Simply put, it is the pooling together of money for a particular group of people who wish to transfer the financial risk of something catastrophic to the group as opposed to accepting the risk personally.  For example, a group of 100 people pay money to the fire insurance company so that if one person’s house burns down, there is money available to rebuild that an individual would not have.  We are playing the averages that not everyone’s house is going to burn down, but we are also playing the averages that someone’s house will burn down.  I do not want the risk of having to come up with perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars if my house burns so I transfer the risk to the group within an insurance company.

Health insurance was at one time the same way.  Remember when we were kids and mom took us to Dr. Reichard?  Guess who paid for that?  Mom and dad did.  We were insured for catastrophic health problems that mom and dad could not afford, but the little problems were paid for out of pocket.  Now health insurance has morphed into health maintainence.  We want everything paid for by the insurance company or the government, not just most serious illnesses.  We have transferred the entire financial risk of our health to the group.  So, naturally, costs are going to be higher.  What do you think would happen to our car insurance premiums if we insisted that our car repairs, inspections, tires, etc. be paid along with our accidents and liabilities?  Of course, they would increase significantly!

Further, we have removed the element of competition because healthcare has become a right or entitlement.  If everyone had to write a check for every aspect of their healthcare, do you think you might shop around and negotiate?  Wouldn’t you seek the lowest price possible?  Would you consider a serious prevention program?  Wouldn’t that keep costs somewhat in check?  In a free market economy, consumers seek out the best value for their dollar.  If someone else’s money is being spent and we are not even seeing it being spent, what do we care how much it costs.  Someone we don’t even know (the impersonal insurance companies and the gov’t) is footing the bill.  ($250 Sunglasses? :))  Would you buy $5 per gallon milk if you could get the same milk somewhere else for $3?  Of course not!  We’ll drive across the country to save 3 cents on a gallon of gas!

So there are two problems that have caused incredible inflation in health care.  We haven’t even touched on litigation.

Just for the fun of it, let’s also compare this to taxes.  If people would actually have to write a check for every cent they paid in all taxes, we’d have another Boston Tea Party and maybe a revolution.  People do not realize how we are double, triple and quadruple taxed.  Think about this for a second:  If you earn a dollar, you pay income, social security and medicare taxes on it.  You spend that dollar at the store and pay sales tax on it.  The store pays corporate income taxes on it (which are actually passed onto you, the consumer in higher prices).  When they pay part of the profit to the employees, the process starts all over again.  And you know what?  You pay no attention to it at all because taxes are either taken directly out of your paycheck or included in your bills.  You never (or rarely) write a check to pay your taxes. 

It’s alot like healthcare.  The solution?  Get the federal government out of the individual lives of people.  Get away from a marxist/socialist economy and get back to freedom and a true free market economy. 

One more thing.  Why “free” healthcare?  Why not free retirement?  Why not free nursing home care?  Why not free housing?  Why not free food?  Are they not as essential as healthcare?  We couldn’t possibly do that because the economy would collapse.  No one would be working!

What we have is a bunch of pandering republicrats that will do anything to stay in power and rob people of their wealth.  What they seem to be trying to do is balance marxism/socialism with free market capitalism so that there is enough dependency on government to keep them in power and get them votes but yet there are still enough producers to pay for it all.  Someday, though, the chickens will come home to roost.  Ask the former Soviet Union.

I am going to get off this little political kick that I am on at some point.  But Betsy commented on my last post and raised some interesting questions.  So, I am going to kick in my two cents, for what it’s worth, on why I am against socialized heath care or socialized anything, for that matter.

This actually involves a long history and constitution lesson about which volumes have been written.  But I will try to keep it brief.  First of all, we are not a democracy but a republic.  There is a difference.  Further, we are not a nation of individual people with one central government, but we are (or are supposed to be) a nation of free and independent states.  If you read the constitution, you will notice that the federal government is supposed to be very, very limited in power.  We are to be governed from the bottom up (individual freedom) not the top down.  This was designed by our founding fathers this way so that the individual and localities would have the power rather than a few elites at the national level.  For example, it would be very difficult for me to speak directly to my US congressmen.  However, I can usually talk directly to my state and local representitives.  In fact, when I lived in Central PA, I knew them personally and saw them quite a bit.  We, the people have more power and therefore more liberty that way.  The federal government was never, ever to be involved in the individual lives of people.  Obviously, the fed has become much stronger and has much more influence over our lives and we have less say.  This is also why I am against abandoning the electoral college and going with the popular vote.  We are to elect people to represent us.  We are to elect people we know and can influence so that we the people have the power and not just a few.

Now, I do not have a problem with socialized anything IF the people decide at the state level that that is what they want.  But it is not supposed to be up to the federal government.  I am not personally for socialization because I believe that people ought to be free to choose.  As for taking care of those in need, that should be done, according to the founding fathers, at the state and local level, not on a national level.  I personally believe that the only things that the federal government is really good and effecient at are national defense, maybe the post office and regulating interstate commerece.  Actually, they aren’t supposed to do much more than that, constitutionally.  If you look at the constitution, the only jurisdiction that the federal government has is over Washington DC and US territories; not states and individuals.

Further, the federal reserve is a crock because the fed has no business manipulating the free market economy.  I won’t go into it, but we could avoid inflation (including healthcare) if we had the gold standard and the fed would quit devaluing the dollar by eliminating fractional reserve banking which allows them to print money, ie. create it out of thin air.  Nixon proved that wage and price controls do not work.  Carter proved that high taxes do not work.  The only thing worse than a socialist/marxist economy is a socialist/marxist economy that masquerades as a free market economy.  Free market competition (true free market) automatically controls inflation all by itself.  That’s a whole different discussion, though. 

If people would read the constitution, they would see just how limited federal powers really are.  If we’re not going to follow the constitution, then let’s put it up to a vote to do away with it.  But let’s not make a mockery of it and the founding fathers as well as the people who gave their lives to protect it.

As for the whole Christian thing, it is convenient to say that one is a Christian to get votes.  I hear George Bush has a filthy mouth, as did Ronald Reagan for that matter.  That is not to say that they aren’t (weren’t) “Christians”, but consider how many people in our society claim to be Christians, know all the jargon and live like hell, totally ignoring the scriptures in their lives.  How can we expect anything different from our leaders?  Pandering, that seems to be all it is.

What do we do about it?  Unfortunately, I am not sure, outside of a revolution, there is much we can do at this point.  Am I worried?  No.  My Dad promised to take care of me.  I trust Him as best I can.