Thoughts on Health Care

Thoughts on Health Care Did the implementation of employer based health insurance prevent the development of a private health insurance market? Auto, home owner and rental insurance are provided by the free market and are highly competitive. These insurance industries grew as the need for them increased. With employer based health insurance covering most workers there was no market for health insurance. The lowest paid works, who had little or no coverage through their employers and the unemployed were not a viable market. Even the inclusion of the self-employed did not warrant the investment into the creation of a private health insurance industry. The vast majority the potential market was eliminated because they had coverage through their employers. Employer based health insurance was not a well-thought-out plan to provide for Americans' health, but came about as a way to circumvent wartime wage regulations that had nothing to do with health. In 1942, the US set up a National War Labor Board which had the power to set a cap on all wage increases. But it let employers circumvent the cap by offering "fringe benefits", most notably, health insurance. These health insurance benefits created a huge tax subsidy because they were treated as tax-deductible expenses for corporations, but not as taxable income for workers. The new job based health insurance grew rapidly and in only about 20 years millions of people who were previously without health insurance now had coverage. While this may seem like a positive development, it also caused many problems. Employer based health care strengthened unions by providing union involvement in the private health care industry, These plans tied workers to their jobs, which benefited employers, but not workers or the economy as a whole. The quality of the coverage was inconsistent, some plans were excellent, others completely inadequate. This new system provided no public control over medical costs. Most importantly it left the poor and elderly without coverage and created no incentive to develop a market. This allowed the government to step in to provide assistance for the elderly and impoverished by creating Medicare and Medicaid. The "managed care revolution" led to the takeover of 90 percent of employer-based health care by HMOs, most of them driven by profit rather than health concerns. Still, most people get their health care through their employer or Medicare and Medicaid. The private health insurance system is now so complex that even “experts” are unable to fully understand it. The industry spends one-third of its cost on paperwork, waste and profit over and above the cost of actually providing health care. Medicare and Medicaid have been losing money for years and are even more complex than the private industry. All of these problems are due at least in part to an employer-based system, the original intent of which was not to provide quality health insurance to all, but to circumvent wartime wage regulations. We all agree that the United States need to make changes to our current health care system, but how should we accomplish this? Do we want a free market system of health insurance as we have with auto insurance, or complete government control? Do we want companies to compete for our business so as to provide affordable personalized plans from which we can choose? Do we want policies independent of our employment that we can keep or change as we desire? Do we want to create new business opportunities and increase employment as the health insurance industry changes? Or do we want the government to have complete control of the health insurance industry? Or do we want to have these new tax increases required for the government’s takeover of health insurance? Or do we want the governments proven inefficiency, waste and bureaucracy to the normal operation of something so vital as our health insurance? I have been careful to refer to health “insurance” rather than health “care”, the health care provided by hospitals and doctors in the United States of America is the best in the world. The current state of the health insurance in the U.S. was created by government regulation, at least in response to a government regulation. Does anyone actually think that more, exponentially more, government regulation or control is the solution? Some facts were taken from "Doctor Wall Street: How the American Health Care System Got So Sick," from a popular pamphlet on the history of the American health care system available for free download at http://laborstrategies.blogs.com/DoctorWallStreet.pdf

Rewriting Histroy

The rewriting of history by progressive liberals is subtle and insidious. They use many forms of media to change public or general perception. If you don’t believe this is true, ask anyone what is the first thing they think of when you say “Robin Hood”. Almost invariably the answer is “robs from the rich and gives to the poor”.
The story of Robin Hood is not about redistribution of wealth.
It is actually a story of people standing up to tyrannical government.
The Sheriff of Nottingham represents an overreaching wasteful government that is taxing its people into poverty to pay for its waste and excess. Robin Hood takes back the money that was stolen through taxation, and returns it to those people who earned it.
Other than the extreme methodology, Robin Hood actually sounds like a TEA Party guy.