Healthcare: Right or Privilage? - Publicus

It is the right of the people to peaceably assemble, question the government, and form individual views. Freedom of religion, assembly, press, and life are rights. Habeas Corpus is a right. Each and every one of these is guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, a document that has successfully governed our country for hundreds of years. Healthcare and insurance, on the other hand, are not rights that all people must have. They are a business, and like all businesses they must charge money and make a profit.

Most of you by now are probably shocked to hear what you think is a cold and unfeeling stance on this issue. Let me say though that my stance neither of these. It is just the way it is. A business is started with the hopes of generating revenue. The revenue that the insurance companies conjure up does not merely go to the executives as most people are lead to believe, but rather to the millions of middle class families who depend on the sharing of these profits for their own livelihoods.

The fact that so many people deem healthcare to be a right goes to show the distortion of the Constitution over the years. America's current state of tribulations has not arisen from a failure of our foundations, but rather from certain people who have confused and exploited the most basic precepts, values, and principles of our national inheritance.

Now, one can't simply write the idea of socialized health care off because, frankly, we are already undergoing a form of socialized medicine within our current system. Anyone, even illegal immigrants, can walk into an emergency room and demand treatment; and they will get it even if they can't pay -- because they don't have to pay. The taxpayer does. Tax rates are climbing and hospitals being forced into bankruptcy are having to succumb to demands of the state and federal government just to keep their doors open. Certainly this is accountable for the ever rising health care costs. Now, knowing this as fact, the Left wants to instill a program (government medicine) that would advertise this! YES YOU CAN go into an emergency room regardless of need. YES YOU CAN not have to reap the costs of the service you are receiving, and YES YOU CAN dump all this on the taxpayer, who sees less and less of the money he earns go into his pocket and instead sees it go to public use. This is the allocation of resources by the government. It is a command style of economics; it is unconstitutional and the Achilles heel of our federal finances.

Fortunately, the solution is simple. And it's called privatization.
When something is privatized, only people who can afford to pay will receive the good. This is the system we have now. The reason that premiums are so high is because simple monopoly laws have not been enforced, NOT because we have created an inhumane system that only benefits the privileged and healthy of our population. This is due to the lobbyists at these firms who do not want to see their enormous conglomerate of a company be divided up. They enjoy having a monopoly (which the congress of both parties has a responsibility to prevent) because they can distort the free market. In effect, it is convolution in order to get a price which maximizes their surplus but leaves the American people high and dry. Enforce the monopoly laws, instead of flushing money down the bottomless pit of "reform," to ensure a better system. Once this is done the true beauty of the private sector shall be allowed to flourish. The key to privatization is competition, and competition breeds success. When companies, or producers, have to compete for buyers, prices are driven down, creating a new market equilibrium and enabling more and more people to afford the service. Standards will go up as insurers are forced to make their good the most affordable and appealing, and eventually a market price will emerge. At the top of the curve, the people with the most money will receive the best possible service; at the bottom, lower income individuals will receive what they can afford. Eventually, the cutting edge technology only available at the top tier will become more available and make it's way down the supply curve, accessing more and more price ranges.

Many people argue that Government run healthcare would just be an extra player in the field and argue that it would operate as the United States Postal Service, or Medicare, runs. Let me remind you that BOTH these programs are running at a severe loss, and if they weren't subsidized by the taxpayer they would all have fallen out of the market, because the market clears out those that cannot provide a fair service at a fair price to both themselves and the consumer. It is with the prime reasons and points listed above that one can clearly see that Medicare is not a socialized, government run plan implemented in order to fix our system, but rather the enforcement of already existing monopoly laws so that the private sector can, as it has in many other fields, continue to support the greatest society on the face of the Earth.
Healthcare is something earned, something that can be made more affordable through the enforcement of monopoly laws. We can not call it something it isn't -- a right -- and drown ourselves in a sea of medicine-induced debt.

Healthcare: Right vs. Responsibility - Civis

American citizens are required to get insurance for their cars. Because cars are important. 

In certain residential areas located adjacent to washes or rivers, citizens are required to get flood insurance. Because our homes are important. 

Why aren't we insured as a people; Aren't we important?

Of course, that's a foolish question. It's quite obvious that health insurance is essential. The question is how to obtain it. The Federal Government is simply the best possible source for this service. Specially, a public option.  

For clarification, it is a right in that everyone deserves to be able to purchase or buy into an organized system of healthcare; not in that everyone should get it for free. 

 Healthcare transcends being some program offered by massive conglomerates. On a local, human level, it is the individual gifts from doctors and nurses to patients. My foremost piece of evidence in favor of a government option is the overhead (administrative) costs for such corporations. The public option, ideally, will look like Medicare, but offered to anyone. Medicare has an overhead cost of 2-3%, even the more modest calculations say 5%. But the average corporate insurer has an overhead rate of roughly 20%. That means 20 cents of every dollar given to these companies is used for administrative costs, which cannot be attributed to any specific business activity. It's the ultimate manifestation of pork and unnecessary spending. 

My favorite analogy for the public option is the U. S. Postal Service. It offers a relatively efficient product at a really low rate for anybody. It keeps its competition, U. P. S. and Fedex, from declining in efficiency. The analogy fails when one considers that the U. S. P. S. operates at a deficit, which the public option won't do. Enough people will pay directly into it, some of the Department of Defenses budget can be reallocated properly, and as the public option negotiates lower prices for certain services, prices will go down. 

And that's important, Americans spend the most on healthcare; it's 16% of our G. D. P. Yet somehow we can't even make it into the top ten worldwide. Healthcare can be affordable; the Government can moderate this appropriately. This is a right. 

-Civis