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Randy Alcorn: Health-Care Reform Lost in the Jungle
After more than a year of public debate, political maneuvering and daily media attention, the issue of health care in America remains unresolved. As the entire, frustrating, process drags on, it reveals not only how difficult it is to find a solution to providing health-care coverage for every American but it also exposes with glaring clarity the realties of who and what we are as a society. Those realities explain the difficulty in finding a solution.
The single overriding reality is that America is an economic jungle in which survival depends on money. Money is ultimately what all the fuss and focus is about, because having enough of it enables the jungle dwellers to protect themselves from the inherent dangers of jungle living. The more money one has, the greater the protection, as well as the comfort and opportunity.
The second reality is that jungle dwellers organize into tribes for the mutual benefits that derive from strength in numbers. Corporations are tribes, as are labor unions, political parties, government bureaucracies and professional associations. Individual jungle dwellers can be members of multiple tribes and even switch allegiances. The primary objective of tribe membership is to facilitate acquisition of money. No tribe in America can survive long without it.
The third reality is that virtually everyone, sometimes grudgingly, accepts the need for an overruling authority that prevents the wholesale destruction of the jungle by the selfish pursuit of money among individuals and tribes. The economic jungle cannot become so savagely unbalanced as to imperil the ecology that sustains it. Government is the authority established to regulate the jungle.
This third reality is where we find the fulcrum upon which the issue of health-care reform teeters. How much government regulation is necessary? How much economic savagery should we tolerate? And, which is the greater threat to the ecology of the economic jungle?
America spent $2.5 trillion on health care last year. At the current rate of increase, annual expenditures on health care will be $4.5 trillion by 2020. The tribes enriching themselves on this bounty want the least government intervention. They argue that the free market will provide the most health care for the most people. But, as the cost of health care relentlessly soars and more people are unable to afford it, all these tribes can do is blame each other for the rising costs.
Hospitals and doctors demand annual price hikes of 40 percent or more to cover losses they blame on fewer patients having adequate or any health insurance. Pharmaceutical companies blame development and research costs for their high prices, but, nevertheless, eke out 20 percent profits. Insurance companies blame all of them for increased premiums, but insurance companies make huge profits by selectively selling policies, denying as many claims as they can get away with, and charging ever-higher premiums.
Surely, the supply-and-demand mechanism of the free market will harness this merry-go-round of greed and provide health-care coverage for everyone, right? We just need to liberate this market from regulation, like we did with the financial market.
WellPoint, the corporate owner of Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, which recently announced 39 percent premium increases in California, posted record profits of $4.5 billion last year — even after paying million-dollar bonuses to its executives, spending $7.8 million lobbying lawmakers, and splurging $27 million on executive retreats.
Appearing recently before a congressional panel, WellPoint’s $9.5 million-per-year CEO, Angela Braly, apparently saw no ethical incongruity about colossal rate hikes in spite of her company’s huge profits, big bonuses and her own lavish compensation.
Nor should she. Under the laws of the economic jungle such callously gluttonous behavior is not only justified, it is expected. Better to kill and gorge than be killed and gorged upon. There is little regard required for the general welfare or for effects on the future. The goal is to gather in as much money as quickly as possible.
For now, most Americans have health insurance, so when it comes to health-care reform they are behaving like herd animals. As long as the grass is green in their corner of the jungle and they are healthy, they are not so concerned that the predators cut the unfortunate stragglers — the slow, sick and injured — out of the herd. They simply go back to munching on the grass and ignore the jackals and hyenas picking clean the bones of the fallen. That’s just life in the jungle.
Until more Americans grasp that most of them are one lost job, one premium hike, one pre-existing condition, one infectious microbe, or one compound fracture away from straggler status, health-care reform is probably doomed. As the Great Recession drags on, however, and joblessness persists, more Americans will feel the pain for the first time, and then reform may come.
Meanwhile, as the jungle becomes more brutally unbalanced, the hyenas and jackals will have no shortage of carrion.
— Santa Barbara political observer Randy Alcorn can be contacted at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Comments
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» on 02.28.10 @ 10:11 PM
I don’t want to be picky, but Randy’s numbers are not entirely correct. Wellpoint’s profit included a one-time sale of a business unit which accounted for $1.8 billion. They were barely profitable in the last quarter. Their lobbying and marketing expenses are a fraction of their expenses, and realistically, even if eliminated, have no discernible impact on their level of services. I would suggest he is disingenuously using these numbers to demagogue the issue. The jungle metaphor is amusing but what if the so-called stragglers got what they wanted and, as a result, they along with the predators were both worse off.
The problem with Obamacare is that it defies the laws of economics. By controlling prices (premiums), increasing demand ( 30 million newly insured people) and no change in supply (doctors), the only result you can be sure of will be the rationing of health care. If you were old enough to remember the long lines at gasoline stations in the late 1970’s, you would be very aware of the negative implications of price controls on gasoline as implemented by a well-meaning Jimmy Carter. Just recently the Premier of Newfoundland had heart surgery in the United States. It was very ironic because he is extremely liberal and a dogmatic advocate of the Canadian single-payer system. It is not difficult to understand why he did this: there are extremely long waiting times for heart surgery in Canada. Believe me, all those people advocating government-controlled health care will be the first to circumvent the system when they get sick.
So Randy, I understand you don’t like the present system but what exactly are your arguing for to replace it. I also think the system needs reform, but let’s not break what we have in pursuit of some idealized and romantic notion of a health care system that works perfectly for everybody.
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» on 02.28.10 @ 10:48 PM
In my previous comment, I indicated that Wellpoint had a $1.8 billion gain from the sale of a business unit. The number should be $3.8 billion.
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» on 03.01.10 @ 09:47 AM
Solve the problen
Get rid if the Insurance companies and trial lawyers—Cash and carry—with an opyion to by catastophic insurance for cancer etc only—This is the only solution..If a doctor is bad he loses his license…Stop the Insurance-Trial lawyer scam..
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» on 03.01.10 @ 10:28 AM
Good rebuttal Lou. I like what Randy has to say most of the time but he is way off base here. This is not his typical libertarian point of view. The purpose of business is making money, period. I don’t care what any corporation tells you in an add or PR event, they are about making money. If you know that and except that, then you don’t have a problem with profit, incentive or most business goals. If you can’t see that logic then Europe is the place for you, don’t go away mad just go away and don’t let the door hit you on the way out. It may be true that other socialist countries do better at coverage but they don’t do so well at quality or quantity. And as Lou so accurately points out, in a market economy it is all about supply and demand (fact is, that is the nature of any economy no matter what basis the distribution or who has control). So the Obama care plan leaves us with no increase in supply but a huge hit on demand with fixed prices. Do the math people you will be rationed and it is inevitable.
Now conservatives have been accused rather wrongly of not providing alternatives, like tort reform (liberal lawyers hate that one), market portability, increased regulation on required coverages so that people are not cancelled and doctors are actually paid what they are worth and deregulating the supply side of the healthcare business so that supply is in sync with demand (ok AMA get out of the way). These simple and easy to implement changes are being resisted furiously by democrats, why? They will cut costs and increase supply thus making the system more available and cheaper, so why the resistance? Because it leaves the government out of the picture that’s why. And mark my words this healthcare debate is not about providing abundant, inexpensive quality healthcare to all, it’s about who gets to control one sixth of the largest economy on earth. It’s about who has the power, we the people or our government on its march toward fascist socialism. This is no accident people look at the population demographics. The largest babyboom in history is headed for old age and increased medical care. The socialists have been salivating over this historic event for 40 years now. If they don’t succeed now they never will and they know it. Don’t be fooled again.
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» on 03.01.10 @ 01:52 PM
At some point, every American knows some family, friend, colleague who finds
themselves in serious straits because of health catastrophes, and stratospheric
medical billing, or insurance cancellations.
Perhaps Congress’ general mind could be concentrated (Samuel Johnson style),
if they were barred from their own low-cost, Platinum, taxpayer funded health
insurance plans for themselves and their families.
Imagine if all of them, at their age, and their various states of health or illness,
had to try to buy coverage on the open market, at the rack rates insurers charge?
Imagine if they had to pay their own money, and not charge it to campaign
expenses?
Imagine if they had to get age/health related rates, and not big discounts for
“special plans” from insurance companies who lobby them, and donate to them?
Then, Mr. Alcorn, the tone-deaf, obstinate, slow moving members of Congress
would be in the same position as you, me, and all Noozhawk’s readers. Then,
the log-jam would probably be broken P.D.Q., as they used to say.
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» on 03.01.10 @ 09:28 PM
I usually agree with Randy and although what he is saying is not what I expected, I find myself agreeing with him here. Our healthcare sytem is in trouble and as far as I know, there was no attempt during the last administration to fix it. The uninsured are flooding the system and they are costly to those of us lucky enough to have good insurance. The current situation is unsustainable and it is getting worse.
One thing I have not heard during the healthcare discussion is the idea of educating more doctors in the U.S.. We are going to have more and more older people who need health care. Will we always be able to recruit qualified MDs from other countries?
There never seem to be too many doctors. Have you ever been to a doctor who wasn’t too busy?
It doesn’t seem like this is the free market at work. Do any of you know who regulates the numbers of MDs in the U.S.?
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» on 03.02.10 @ 08:58 AM
Wow, TG you freaking get it!!! Nowhere in this entire debate has anyone ever mentioned increasing the SUPPLY of medical care. What, you idiot socialist pushing Neanderthals think insurance coverage is the same as medical care? Dunderheads! Idiots! Losers! Oh I’m sorry what I meant to say was LIARS! The democrats know that their bills do NOT increase supply but instead increases DEMAND. PEOPLE WAKE UP! More demand with the same supply will either raise prices or ration supply, got it! It ain’t freaking rocket science. You cannot have more people covered with no increase in supply. That means more doctors, nurses, technicians, administrators, hospitals, clinics, device manufacturers and pharmaceutical manufactures. TG, we have less of those now and the high cost of law suits and regulation is strangling what is left. Nothing talked about or proposed by the left or the democrat party addresses this issue. Furthermore, since all that extra supply does not make wealth in our economy (it’s all service) it has to be paid for somewhere. And you though extra insurance coverage was expensive (2 to 6 trillion dollars) wait until you get a load of the cost of supply. We need to produce way more than we consume if we want a better medical supply. But folks your congress knows this already. The slick lawyers for the AMA will not allow more doctors and we the people do not have the money for more of the rest so what will happen? You will pay more, get less and die anyway and the lawyers, politicians and socialist elites will all get filthy rich. This is not freaking fairyland where Obama can just wave his socialist wand and everything is covered and good. It has to be paid for whether you are a socialist, capitalist or any other ist. Got it?
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» on 03.04.10 @ 10:54 AM
Unfortunately, Mr. Alcorn’s article demonstrates the epitomy of the argument “...it shouldn’t be this way…”
“I, he, she suffered the following because of the current “Health Care System” and it shouldn’t happen again.”
That represents the classic “False Arguement” scenario by quoting someone who had a bad experience in some area and assuming that this represents “a crisis” that must be remedied for everyone.
Not a good basis for policy.
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