|
The Paradise Perspective: Commentary from a Free and Compassionate Alternate Reality Volume 1, Number 31 Health Care Are
Corporatist and Coercive-Socialist
the Only Choices? by Glen Allport Exclusive to STR August 27, 2007 -
1 - Within
Living Memory: When Things Worked As
children in the mid-1950s, my siblings and I were exposed to the typical
childhood diseases of the time: measles, chicken pox, mumps, and of course
colds and flu. When
we were sick, our parents called the doctor, who came out to our home near
We
weren't poor, but we certainly weren't wealthy. My father grew up in the
Great Depression and was careful with money, but I never heard anything to
suggest that medical costs were bothersome to him. As
I learned later, there were options during the 1950s for those who could
not afford the going rates for medical care, including free clinics,
charity hospitals, and sliding-scale fees or pro bono work performed by
many doctors. The government did little to discourage doctors and nurses
from providing free or low-cost care if they wished to do so, and many
did. Instead,
we have a mess that almost no one is happy with. What happened? How did
things go so wrong? -
2 - "Improving"
the Situation with Coercion Over
the past several decades, both the cost and inconvenience associated with
medical care in the The
inconvenience and outright tyranny involved are not often discussed, but
anyone who has watched the health care industry – it really isn't a
unified "system" – evolve over the past few decades knows the
story: seeing a doctor has gone from a typical market interaction – walk
in, get your product or service, pay, and leave without hassle – to an
interaction more akin to dealing with a government bureaucracy; worse, a
government bureaucracy shaped by the endless War on Terror. Imagine your
local barber or home-electronics store being run by Homeland
Security or FEMA, with intrusive, insulting, costly, and time-wasting
procedures nearly crowding out the actual provision of service. This is,
to me, even more of a problem than the explosion in health-care cost. Yet
the cost increases are substantial. In 1950, medical
costs were only 5% of consumer expenditures, and Medicare, along with
most of the rest of today's government and employer involvement in medical
matters, was yet to be. That changed rapidly starting in the 1960s. By
the mid-1980s, more than half of medical care dollars were being spent
by Medicare, Medicaid, and government-encouraged employer-paid health
insurance. One immediately notes the decoupling
of medical spending from consumer actions and pocketbooks – a
well-known and easily-understood economic recipe for skyrocketing costs.
Add the massive new bureaucracies involved, the mountain of time-consuming
and costly new regulations, and the constant lobbying by those feeding at
the government-medical trough, and it is no wonder that costs are out of
control. In
2005, health
care consumed 16% of GDP – the highest number ever. The cost of
health care has been rising at more than the rate of general inflation for
years, and is projected to reach 20%
of GDP less than a decade from now. The
situation will get even worse – much
worse. Dr. Ron Paul, the stealth
libertarian candidate for president (running as a Republican), pointed
out at his congressional website recently that "The National
Taxpayers Union reports that Medicare will consume nearly 40% of the
nation’s GDP after several decades because of the new drug benefit.
That’s not 40% of federal revenues, or 40% of federal spending, but
rather 40% of the nation’s entire
private sector output!" [Emphasis added] Further
note: that isn't for health care generally, but only for one government health care program. There are others, and some (Veterans
Affairs health benefits, for instance) are huge. Then there are
non-government health care expenditures. Adding it up, we appear headed
for health-care costs of 100% of GDP (or more!) in the not-too-distant
future. Clearly, something has to change. Health
care is literally bankrupting America. Our government's decision to
"help" people with their health care has made things dramatically
worse. -
3 - The
Illusion of Choice: When Every Option is Corrupt and Coercive Our
health care problems, like those of Cuba,
Canada, England,
Sweden,
and almost every other nation on Earth, have been caused by government
action. More government will make things worse, not better. There
are many ways to arrange economic life, but the two forms currently
fighting for dominance in the West are corporatism
and coercive-socialism. (Their
proponents use different names, but I find these more accurate and
descriptive). Both corporatism and coercive-socialism posit the need for a
State with sole authority to initiate coercion against peaceful
individuals. Democratic elections, combined with relentless propaganda
during the school years and from the media, are the primary tools for
making the system appear fair and legitimate in either form. -
4 - Corporatism By
"corporatist,"
I mean a system that superficially appears democratic and market-based,
but in which corporations have gained ever-more control over the workings
of government. In a corporatocracy, business increasingly directs the
coercive power of the State, using it to the benefit of corporations and
the private-sector power elite. At the same time, the "public"
sector grows as the corporatocracy expands the size and power of its
captive proxy, the State. Lobbying
is the most visible tool for applying corporate power to the actions of
government. The The
symbiotic arrangement of corporatism benefits both the State and the
corporations, in the sense that both grow in size and power. Yet in the
long run, the system is toxic and destructive – even to the State and the corporations. Are today's higher medical costs
benefiting Ford or GM? Does the military-industrial complex draining our
treasury help Apple or other non-M-I-C corporations? Has any of this
really made our government more sound? Even
more fundamentally, using government coercion to benefit a corporation
unfairly is good for the corporate bottom line only in the short term.
Open and honest competition in the marketplace is the Darwinian force
keeping businesses fit, and weeding out those which are not fit.
"Helping" an industry by shielding it from competition, paying
its fees from the public treasury, or otherwise providing unfair advantage
can only make the industry less competitive in the long run. This means
higher prices and inferior products or services; neither makes an industry
stronger, not to mention how such things affect consumers. The medical and
pharmaceutical industries in this country are prime examples. -
- - - - But
threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. Of
these, I mention two only. .
. . Our military organization
today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in
peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Until
the latest of our world conflicts, the This
conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry
is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic,
political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse,
every office of the Federal government. In
the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of
unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the
military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of
misplaced power exists and will persist. We
must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or
democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert
and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge
industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and
goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. Akin
to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our
industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during
recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government. .
. . Partly
because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes
virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old
blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The
prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment,
project allocations, and the power of money is ever present -- and is
gravely to be regarded. Yet,
in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we
must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy
could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. .
. . As
we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must
avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and
convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the
material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of
their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for
all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow. -
- - - - While
not a gifted orator (you can listen to the speech here),
Eisenhower crafted and delivered his address in a manner to appear
concerned yet calm and impassive. But Ike was an educated man and he knew
where such problems must lead; there is too much history available for a
man like Eisenhower not to have known the dangers and to have worried that
a tipping point had already been passed. I have come to see in
Eisenhower's farewell address a man heartbroken and shaken by what his
government had already become. I believe he was profoundly concerned,
perhaps even afraid, for the future. The
"disastrous rise of misplaced power" has come to pass in Today's
health care crisis is only one symptom of this disaster. Far worse is
coming unless we begin rapid and dramatic change. -
5 - Coercive-socialism I
use the term "coercive-socialist" because true socialism
involves no coercion, yet government is based upon nothing else. Every
benefit supplied by government, no matter the system
of government, is paid for by money taken from people by force, whether
they like it or not. This is armed robbery, not compassion. Coercive
funding of anything is
completely at odds with compassion and with the concept of customer
satisfaction. In
a coercive-socialist setting, can it be surprising when corruption
creeps in? Or when corruption and inefficiency blossom into full-blown
disaster? Can it be surprising when the problems which beset
coercive-socialist governments prove similar to those of modern
"capitalist" nations: too much centralized control, too much
corporatism, too much graft and corruption, along with bureaucratic and
police-state growth spiraling out of control? In health care, the
rationing, the sometimes deadly waiting for treatment and other problems
typical of coercive-socialist nations (see links above in section 3) are
precisely what one expects from a government-run service. Imagine
Microsoft, Apple, or the nation's farms run by the government: does that
sound like an improvement to you? Still,
given a choice between having government put taxpayer money into war or
into health care and health-related regulation, I would choose health care
and regulation; war is aimed specifically at killing people, while
government-run health care and regulation only kill people by side effect.
Yet, in terms of numbers of deaths, government control of medical care
and health-related regulation, especially if we include the pharmaceutical
industry, can be as deadly as any war. Medical
mistakes in America kill up to 100,000 people annually, (or perhaps 225,000,
depending on how one classifies the data). Furthermore, as I have pointed
out before, the FDA may be "the
number one cause of death in the United States." William Falloon
of the Life Extension
Foundation makes that accusation and backs it up with a crushing stack
of data. The
In
the U.S., the FDA has worked for years to "protect" Americans
from over-the-counter supplements, even as it has approved drugs that kill
scores of thousands every year (Tambocor,
Vioxx,
Avandia,
etc.).
If the FDA and the medical/pharmaceutical cartels get their way,
European-style regulation of supplements will come to the Nor
is it only the FDA which seems intent on using its regulatory power to
endanger people: for one horrifying example, the USDA has been preventing
cattle producers from testing their own cattle for Mad Cow Disease.
Such
problems are as vexing in coercive-socialist nations as they are in When
health care systems famous for long
waits and for sometimes-deadly rationing
are held up as models to aspire to, it should be clear that we are missing
something important. The choices we are being given for delivery of health
care are limited to forms that are already
known to be failures. Why then are the media and our politicians
pushing these forms? Because corporatism and coercive-socialism are big
successes – for the power elite. Both systems bring larger budgets,
bigger bureaucratic empires, more opportunities for personal enrichment,
and increased power to those who think it their right to run our lives. With
either corporatism or coercive-socialism, the power elite win – and the
rest of us lose. -
4 - A
Real Choice: Love and Freedom in Place of Coercive Control America
was far less free in the 1950s than it had
been at the turn of the century, when (for example) anyone, of any age,
could walk into a pharmacy and purchase whatever they needed without
getting a note from their doctor. As I pointed out near the start of this
column, Still,
health care in We
broke the system by letting our politicians get involved, and now the
system is at a crisis point. Fixing the problem requires undoing the
damage. How
would that work, exactly? Why not listen to someone with decades of
experience as both a doctor and a congressman – Dr. Ron Paul, for
example. Paul is an OB-GYN and was a flight surgeon during the Vietnam
War. You can listen to a detailed, highly-informed interview with Dr. Paul
on the topic of health care by the Kaiser Family Foundation by clicking here;
the page includes the option of podcast, transcript, or a terrific
high-definition video (16 min 39 sec). One
thing I can promise you: all the other health care commentary you'll hear
from candidates this campaign season will sound even more clueless and
offensive after listening to Dr. Paul simply talk sensibly and speak the
truth. Glen Allport is the author of The Paradise Paradigm: On Creating A World of Compassion, Freedom, and Prosperity and maintains paradise-paradigm.net. This is one in a series of columns on the human condition.
|
