Obama Care

Healthcare is a touchy subject.  There are so many deeply emotional stories of family members dying painful and seemingly needless deaths that we feel the need to do something to help them. Even I, as a libertarian, feel that we as a nation should be able to do better. Before reading further I would like you to read this post on a far left liberal blogging website.

That blog posting is rather crass but deeply emotional. I am willing to bet that most of us come away from reading it with a feeling of sadness for that woman’s brother and a sense of wanting us to do better when it comes to health care availability for all. Didn’t you?

Of course, being a far left liberal website, this woman blamed the republicans and the “tea-jadist” for the painful death of her brother. And since this website does not allow non-member comments all the comments to her blog post were in full support and agreement with her point of view on his death. After all, he went to the doctor for a pain in his buttocks on December 3 and ended up having to wait until February 25 to talk to a pulmonologist about a 3cm spot they had found on his lung. The suggestion was that if he had not had to wait they could have stopped the metastatic cancer that turned out to be the cause of his pain.

Before I go further I would like to say that I have a deep sense of compassion for this woman’s brother and the pain he suffered. My father also died from cancer that had metastasized, as well as my wife’s father. It will be a wonderful world when no one has to go through such agony and we can all live long and healthy lives with quick and quiet deaths at the end. Unfortunately, the world of Star Trek and the one shot cure has not yet arrived.

Now, for the errors in this woman’s thinking on the death of her brother: he went to the doctor for a pain in his buttocks – not for a pain in his lungs or for breathing difficulties. The fact that ER personnel apparently ordered chest x-rays for a pain in his buttocks suggest that they heard something in his breathing. Something that gave them enough pause to order a chest x-ray for a patient that was complaining of a pain in his buttocks. X-rays are expensive and ERs don’t order them for no reason; especially for a patient that has no visible means of paying for them. And the wait for the pulmonologist is normal even if you have insurance. I myself had to wait six weeks to see a pulmonologist after an MRI showed a small spot of scar tissue in my lungs. So, overall it sounds like he was treated pretty well – whether he had insurance or not. This unfortunate man had lung cancer that had metastasized and had spread to the bone in his buttocks. Metastatic cancer is an insidious disease that is almost impossible to cure and almost always leads to a slow and painful death. His horrible demise was already set before he ever made that first ER visit.

The republicans and tea-partiers had nothing to do with this; they did not create metastatic cancer or give it to this man. No amount of socialized healthcare would have saved him either. He was going to die. What socialized medicine would have done in this case is rip-off the system for a minimum of $22,000. How do I know that? The woman stated that the man’s friends had donated the $2,000 that a proctologist had wanted to do some type of outpatient surgery and that he could not have that operation done because the hospital wanted $20,000 for the use of the operating room. If the man had had insurance then he would have received this operation – probably for a cost to the health care system far greater than the $22,000 total mentioned. And this surgery would not have done anything to save this man’s life. Yes, the surgeon might have discovered the cancerous bone, and might have even cut it out, but the man would have still died a slow and painful death. At most, the surgeon would have alleviated the man’s suffering for a brief time – only for it to return within a few months.

At this point I’d be willing to bet that you are expecting me to expound on the virtues of our private health care system and rail against socialized medicine. After all, I’m supposed to be a libertarian – right?  And Canadians – who’s socialized medical system produces long lines and government entities deciding who dies and who doesn’t – come here in droves for health care – don’t they?

Well, even for me it is not that simple. Yes, I am a libertarian but when it comes to health care you are talking about people’s lives – the most precious liberty of all. Someone’s ability to pay for health care, or health insurance, should not be the main factor in deciding whether they get the health care that they need. Just because someone has money does not mean that they are more worthy of being saved than those that don’t. We, as a nation, can do better than this. However, the bloated Obama’ Care program will do nothing to help the current situation. The far left’s answer to everything - government control - will not do anything but create another bloated bureaucracy and cost the nation even more. That proctologist’s operation would have cost the taxpayers that $22,000 dollars (probably more under government controlled heath care) and in return the man would have died anyway. The republicans and tea-partiers are not saying that we don’t need to do something about the state of our current health care system – they are just saying that the liberal Obama solution is not the right one.

Despite the cries from conservatives about Canadians coming here in droves for their health care, Canadian surveys show that less than 0.5% of Canadians sought medical care in the United States and less than a quarter of those did so expressly. In other words, most of the 0.5% did so just because they were already here. So this particular argument against socialized medicine is a red herring designed to distract attention from the fact that a far greater percentage of Canadians are happy with their health care system (75%) than are Americans (%25). In one famous case, Shona Holmes, a Canadian, came to the Mayo Clinic for a “life threatening” condition because she could not get the care she needed in a timely manner in Canada. She even went on to appear in ads in the United States warning Americans about the dangers of adopting a Canadian style health care system.  The condition that she had is known as Rathke's cleft cyst. She described this condition as a life threatening brain cancer that was taking her vision and (through suggestion) would eventually take her life. In fact, Rathke's cleft cyst is a benign (non-cancerous) growth that occurs on the pituitary gland. It is most often found during autopsies of individuals who died from unrelated causes. Sufferers of Rathke’s cleft often have disturbances to their vision but actual death rate due to Rathke's cleft cyst is 0%.

There are no real statistics that can be used to support the idea that the US health care system is better than any other developed nation. In fact, all the statistics show otherwise – we are near the bottom. We spend more money for health care per capita than any other nation and yet we rank 37^th for overall health care. Still, nothing in Obama Care is going to improve this. Expanding federal government by forcing a few million people to buy health insurance – that do not want it – will not fix it.

The conservative right also complains about the possibility of the government deciding who lives and who dies. This is a valid concern and, considering how lousy the government is at running most social programs, one which will most likely come to pass under Obama Care. The problem that I see with this argument from the right is that someone is always deciding who lives and who dies. Right now the main factor in that decision is money. Those that don’t have money either don’t get the care they need or have to wait for months to get approval for life saving treatment on Medicaid. Are the corporate pirates of Enron, or Lehman Brothers, or Fanny Mae anymore worth saving than those who, perhaps, spend their lives volunteering to help others and have little in the way of capital assets of their own?

Health care is a limited resource, one which everyone needs at some point in their life, and something that most of don’t really think of as optional. This in itself makes it a service that does not fully work under the capitalist system. For it to continue on in its current state is simply unacceptable for most of us. Yet, nothing in Obama Care will help make anything any better. In fact, it will do to health care what the liberal ideas have done to our school system. It will bring down the level of care to the lowest common denominator for all of us rather than lifting it up for the unfortunate few.

What are we to do? I don’t have the answers for that one. What I would do is scrap Obama Care in its entirety and start over. I would bring in doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, and insurance company representatives, as well as everyday citizens, to talk about the issues that they face and the pressures that keep their cost rising. I would attempt to begin solving the issues without more government programs and bureaucracies to drive up the cost. I would look at existing programs to see what works and what doesn’t. And, even though I am a libertarian, I would look at taking out the profit motive where possible. A fully socialized health care system where everyone receives the most drastic of treatments in the attempt to save their lives at all cost would be a dramatic failure – a cost burden that would end up collapsing our entire way of life. However, the “money or your life” type system that would exist under a fully capitalist system is not acceptable either.

Alternate Blog: http://libertarianorbust.wordpress.com/2011/09/19/obama-care/

School Vouchers? Not so fast...

The new school year started a couple of weeks ago for my children. I have four of them, one boy and three girls, and three of them are now in school. My oldest, the boy, was transitioning this year to the middle school as a sixth grader and his mother and I were having serious reservations. The middle school here has a very bad reputation. The word from most parents is that the school is run like a prison and the staff, principal and teachers included, are rude, obnoxious, and seem to care little about the students.

The atmosphere of the school and the tone of the administration was a bit worrying. The children could not talk at anytime save for lunch, during which they are allowed to talk very quietly. When moving between classes they were only allowed to move "clockwise" through the school building. Even if his next class is the next door down, counter-clockwise, he still had to go all the way around the building to get to it. The school said that this was done to prevent bullying.

What? All students have their education turned into a robotic, unsocial and unstimulating experience because a few students cannot control themselves?

I guess I should not have been too surprised. When my son was in fourth grade he was bullied extensively on the school bus by an older and much bigger fifth grader. After several complaints to the school the bus driver decided that the best solution was to force my son to sit by himself in the front of the bus, away from his friends, to "protect" him from this bully. The bully, however, was allowed to keep sitting in the back of the bus with his friends where they continued bullying the other smaller students on the bus. When I heard about this I made a visit to the principal of the school. She never like me very much after that visit for some reason....

After talking things over with my wife we decided to pull him out of the middle school and home school him before he got too far into the new school year. Especially since the main reason for sending him to the public school - socialization - was completely missing from the environment.

So, we embarked on our first home schooling experience. The first thing my wife did was to test him to see where he was at. As I expected, he tested a full grade ahead in language arts - he was always a good reader. His math skills were not quite that far ahead but it was hard to tell for certain since the test we were using contained math for the 5th Grade level that my son had never seen while in the fifth grade. He also seemed to be emotionally struggling more with this test. He was complaining more and acting like he just could not understand simple directions on the test. Things that we knew were not above his understanding. We sat him down and asked him what was going on. His answers were all childish, nonsensical arguments about the test and why he could not understand it. My wife and I were totally baffled. Finally, my wife asked him if he was acting this way because he wanted to go back to the public school.

"No!" he insisted and, after a brief pause, tears began to stream down his face. The underlying frustration in him was obvious. He started towards his bedroom, he did not want his sisters to come in and see him crying. I stopped him and looked to wife and mouthed "privacy" as I headed towards our bedroom with him in tow. She shook her head yes and quickly followed us in, shutting the door behind her.

Without going further into the ensuing conversation it turned out that my son was having trouble simply asking for help. He did not want to leave any of the math questions unanswered since they were supposed to be 4th and 5th grade questions and he was now a big 6th grader. He could not stand the idea of not being able to understand some of the 4th grade questions and many of the 5th grade questions and wanted help - mainly on the meaning of certain terms that he was not familiar with.

Now, here is the amazing part. He told us that he had learned that he had to play dumb while in elementary school in order to get help!

He was always considered to be one of the "smart" kids since he could read on a third grade level in kindergarten, was in the special "PACE" classes for exceptionally bright children, and was always on the "A" honor roll ("A&B" honor roll in 5th grade). The teachers, thinking he was so exceptionally smart, ignored his request for help in class and spent their time helping the children that they thought needed it the most. So he learned that if he acted dumb then the teachers would give him more help when he truly needed it!

This, in a nutshell, is what happens when the schools cater to the lowest common denominator. School children get dragged down to that level rather than the slower children being lifted up. Our schools should be challenging the students, all of them. The liberals believe that no child should feel bad and all children should feel equal. Although I understand the basic feelings that are behind this their methods of achieving it are completely wrong and detrimental to our children.

Conservatives seem to think that the school voucher program is the best way to go. With a school voucher system parents could send their kids to any school they wanted to. They could send them to a "better" public school or even a private school. According to conservatives this would stimulate competition and force bad schools to improve. The thing is, the school voucher program would only be useful for a few select families. I am physical conservative who usually votes republican but I am by no means wealthy. I am not struggling to pay my bills but it is nearly a paycheck to paycheck existence. I cannot afford to drive my children back and forth everyday to the next nearest school. The cost in gasoline alone would be staggering. A school voucher program would be useless for me and many others, I'm sure.

What we need is greater freedom within the schools.  Freedom "from" intrusive school boards that think they know what is best for our children. Freedom "from" administrators with condescending, know it all attitudes. Let’s give the parents of the schools real power. Freedom from the federal and state government telling us exactly what our children "need". We could give real power to the parents - like the "PTA" but with actual authority. If parents knew that the PTA had actual voting power, power to change the way the school is run and the freedom to involve themselves in the daily school process as needed then we might actually begin to see some changes.

It would not be a lovely bed of roses overnight but eventually new methods of teaching our children would evolve that would shine above the rest. The parents, seeing those other methods working elsewhere, would quickly bring those methods to their schools. Parents would work much faster than the bloated bureaucracy of our school systems. And, just maybe, future students would find school to be an enjoyable and stimulating experience.

Mandated Health Insurance VS Mandated Auto Insurance

All too often we hear pundits on the left arguing that if the government can mandate that people buy automobile insurance then the government can mandate that people buy health insurance. Even worse, pundits on the right never seem to respond to this statement beyond rolling their eyes and quickly moving on to something else – making it appear that they are afraid that their political rivals might be correct. So are they?

Not only no but HELL NO!

Here are the main differences:

1)       Automobile insurance is not mandated by the federal government. It is mandated by the states if the states so choose – “States Rights”.

2)      In most states you can be self insured by having a bond whose value is equivalent to the required liability levels of your state.

3)      You can choose to not own a vehicle and use public transportation instead.

4)      You can choose to not operate your motor vehicle on the public roads and highways. If you don’t then you don’t need auto insurance. Many farmers and businesses own and operate vehicles on private land without insurance or registration and don’t even need to have a driver’s license to operate them.

5)      The only way to opt out of the Health Insurance mandate is to commit suicide!

Yes, most of us need our vehicle and we need to drive it on the public highways so we purchase liability insurance.  Every right comes with certain responsibilities and the ability to pay for any injury or damage that we may cause while exercising our right to drive a vehicle on publicly owned roads is one of them. This insurance protects others from our own mistakes. Health insurance is not protecting others from our own mistakes – it is something we purchase to protect ourselves from the high cost of health care.

We can claim the right to health care but our “right” to anything ends where the other person’s rights begin. We do not have the right to force someone else to pay for our health care or to provide their health care services for free. That would infringe too heavily upon their right to make a living and their right to keep their own hard earned money. Just because the federal government can get a bare majority of congressmen to sign off on doing just that by force of law does not make it any less of an infringement on our rights.