By Myron Pauli
Around age 8, I got sick and either my mom or dad had Dr. Kontorwitz walk 300 feet with his black bag to look at me. I have no idea how the bill was paid and what was a PPO or HMO or HAS or Exchange or Cafeteria Plan – and someone else (my parents) had to figure it all out. At age 20, dad was dead and my mom moved away and I was without insurance (between college and grad school), when I last saw Kontorwitz for a 2nd degree burn on my foot – just me and the doctor – no accountants – and I paid the entire $5 in cash.
Starting with wage and price controls in World War II, employer-sponsored insurance became the norm. Insurance (for catastrophes) later turned into “health care” to cover Viagra, acne, diarrhea, and sprained ankles. In 1965, Medicare/Medicaid took regulation to new staggering heights. Every regulation begat more responses from providers, insurance companies, and middlemen involving further paperwork, accountants, attorneys and yet more middlemen.
Technological advances also allow us to keep terminally ill patients alive a few extra weeks or months. (I personally doubt that my wife’s last 3 weeks of suffering from cancer were worth the expense – but it was covered.) “Explanation of Benefits” statements require cryptographic skills – and this is long before the “Affordable Care Act” of 2009, alias “Obamacare”.
People old enough to remember any semblance of a “free unregulated market” in medicine are mostly Medicare recipients. To most people, to even get a Kleenex in a doctor’s office requires sheets of paperwork, dozens of signatures/waivers and insurance cards. This reality has existed for decades and is the only reality known to people who want to feel secure that their coronary bypass will only cost a $100 co-pay.
Since the solution to too much regulation is always more regulation, Obamacare was born. Some of its 2900 pages came from ideas from the Heritage Foundation, George Romney, various HMOs, trade associations and lobbyists. Naturally, the Republicans had their alternative solutions. I have a doctorate in nuclear physics and I doubt I can go through the thousands of pages and relevant legislation and bureaucratic “agency interpretations” in order fathom which bureaucratic mess is “better” – perhaps my kidneys are better off with the Democrats while my liver will fare better with the Republicans?! I suspect that 99.999% of people mouthing off have no clue. It is more like Sunni Islam vs. Shiite Islam – a matter of faith.
The libertarian alternative is to remove government from health care which is a situation completely alien to nearly all Americans. The $100 co-pay for the knee replacement is visible while the rest of the costs are unseen. While Americans can understand religious freedom to choose to worship Jesus vs. Zeus vs. Vishnu; health care freedom comes with responsibility and is an alien concept. And when “the taxpayers” pay for health care, we get the inevitable regulated Nanny State as surely as dropping an egg produces a splat.
But until Americans desire liberty as much as their life, Obamacare—or Boehnercare and PPOs, HMOs, HSAs, EOBs, exchanges, ad tedium—is here to stay. Democratic mommy vs. Republican daddy – we are all children and we had better obey our parents – especially when mommy and daddy are very power hungry and we children have been told that the alternative to regulated health care is sure death.
In spite of all the shutdown nonsense about closing down forests and parks, regulated medicine is only likely to end when the money spigot dries up.
LINKS:
1. http://www.ed2go.com/career/training-programs/medical-coding-billing-course
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx2scvIFGjE
3. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/get-your-goddamn-governme_b_252326.html
4. http://www.howto.gov/web-content/requirements-and-best-practices/laws-and-regulations/paperwork-reduction-act
5. http://rsc.scalise.house.gov/solutions/rsc-betterway.htm
6. http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss1.html
7. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/12/soda-overweight_n_3429151.html
8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Soviet_Union
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Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli, Ph.D., grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.