The United States National Health Insurance Act (USNHI) – H.R. 676

On January 27, 2008, U.S. Representative John Conyers Jr. (D-MI) introduced a new version of a previously unsuccessful bill before Congress that would turn America’s health care system into a socialized, not-for-profit, singer-payer system.  Previous iterations of the bill had few co-sponsors (25 in 2003), and the current version (H.R. 676), has gained a modicum of traction thanks to Michael Moore‘s film documentary, Sicko, which contends that the United States is the only developed country that does not currently have “universal health care.”

As an advocate for market-based health care (which we currently do not have), obviously I have problems with 676.  A few days ago I attended a lecture and discussion about the bill, presented by advocates in favor of it, to an audience of comprised mostly of naive first and second-year medical students…with one of two true skeptics interspersed within.  Below I present a few of the problems with 676 and with single-payer health care in general.

First, the highlights of the proposed law.  676 purports to cover the following: primary care and prevention, inpatient care, outpatient care, emergency care, prescription drugs, durable medical equipment, long term care, mental health services, the full scope of dental services (other than cosmetic dentistry), substance abuse treatment services, chiropractic services, basic vision care and vision correction (other than laser vision correction for cosmetic purposes), and hearing services including coverage of hearing aids.  Basically everything.  And you can go to any doctor or provider you want.  And there’s no deductibles, copayments, coinsurance, or other cost-sharing to be imposed with respect to covered benefits.  Sounds nice doesn’t it?

The cost.  I haven’t read the feasibility studies, but the text of the bill says all of this wonderful stuff, for every American citizen, will be paid for with income tax increases on the top 5% of earners, a progressive excise tax on payroll and self-employment income, existing government health care revenues, and a tax on stocks and bonds.  Additionally, the bill foresees a 15-year integration process, which will be paid for by issuing Treasury Securities.  Congress reserves the right to decide how much to tax the American public, it’s a basic tenet of our system of government…and with the guidelines above, we’re looking at a legislated equivalent of a blank check.  Why?  Because providing comprehensive, quality, accessible care to every citizen will command a budget possibly larger than any other ever conceived by man.  The U.S. Treasury will issue hundreds of billions upon hundreds of billions in debt to fund the 15 year transition period.  Just to “integrate” the new system, we are looking at compounding our debt (which is owned mostly be foreign investors), by nightmare proportions.  We will no longer own our own country.  Our grand-children and great-grandchildren will spend their lives paying interest to Dubai, India, China, Russia, and Japan.  The dollar will continue to weaken…perhaps it will reach parity with the Mexican peso.  Additionally, depending upon the size of the taxes necessary just to drive the operational side of this beast, there will be significantly less incentive for businesses to continue to exist on U.S. soil.  An excise tax on self-employment income is the government’s way of telling entrepreneurs and business owners to get f***ed.  

Medicare is poised to make up a record amount of our GDP in a few years…it’s already unsustainable and will soon be bankrupt in its current form.  It should be noted that the current form of Medicare covers only elderly people, and only pays for a fraction of the services listed above.  The USNHI proposes no revolutionary way to reduce the costs associated with administering an undertaking, which expands Medicare’s coverage on a exponential scale.  This is an atomic bomb. 

Private insurance becomes illegal if 676 is passed.  We use the term “universal health care” in quotations to describe countries like Israel and the United Kingdom, because these countries HAVE private insurance options.  People who can afford to, pay for supplemental private insurance, because even with smaller, more homogenous populations, these countries are not able to provide a fraction of what 676 promises.  And that’s with high personal income taxes, and very little defense spending (with the exception of Israel, most countries with quasi-socialized medical care depend on us for this).  In Canada, people routinely pay bribes to skip the line. 

This brings me to my next point.  Banning something the market is screaming for is like leaving picnic food at a park and putting up a “no ants” sign.  It’s a comical act of futility.  And it costs billions of dollars.  We have a country with a revolving door border policy.  Our government has spent hundreds of billions on drug enforcement…how well is that working?  How many people in this country own firearms purchased without proper licensing on a black market?  If you don’t allow for a private tier of health care payership, you force a black market to form.  Then you have to create government agencies to enforce and prosecute illegal “pushers” of private health care.  This cost isn’t factored into 676. Perhaps we could charge a “modest” excise tax…

Doctors will have no opportunity to attain true wealth.  Under 676, providers may elect to be paid government-dictated salaries, or reimbursed at government-dictated rates for services rendered.  Current private Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs), who are the target of 676 supporters, reimburse doctors at a MULTIPLE of Medicare reimbursement rates.  This is because doctors cannot afford to stay in business strictly on Medicare payments.  With skyrocketing malpractice premiums forcing many doctors into retirement, we could be looking at a future with no domestic doctors.  676 does not (and legally cannot) address medical malpractice – medical licensing and tort reform are handled on a state level.  Doctors have little incentive to exist in this environment, particularly those doctors facing hundreds of thousands in student loans…which is most of them.  676 does not address medical school tuition.  With no primary care physicians, the queues will grow quickly.  In Canada it takes 10.1 weeks to get a CT scan.  How long will it take in a country our size?

Then there’s the problem of illegal immigrants.  676 only covers American citizens.  Are we prepared to deny all care to illegal immigrants?  I doubt so.  The cost of providing similar care to this demographic (making up a significant chunk of the population), has not been factored into the bill.  Taxes go up more.  A true welfare state. 

There’s a slippery slope here.  At some point you have to decide whether you’re country’s mission is Capitalism (the American Dream), or Communism (from each according to his ability to each according to his need).  I don’t think we’re ready to give up the ghost quite yet.  The great empires of the world had much longer tenures than 200 years.  Are we ready to become a welfare state, and give the crown to a new empire?  The next empire probably isn’t going to be as nice as us.  It probably isn’t going to drop food and vaccines on African villages…

Finally, the perfect irony.  The purveyors of USNHI tout it as the answer to large for-profit HMOs that put shareholder interests and CEO salaries before patient well-beings.  What?!  By putting the government in charge of it?!  The same government that takes handouts from special interests groups that represent all kinds of nasty interests perpendicular with those of individual American health care users?  Corruption was invented in Congress.  Congress created the original food pyramid to promote the interests of the U.S. Agricultural industry, not our health.  That’s why it recommended 5-11 servings of starch per day.  One could cogently argue that the government created type II diabetes to help the American farmer.  If you read history, governments, especially those with absolute power, don’t have the best track record in the human rights category.  There was this guy named Stalin, maybe Michael Moore should do a documentary…

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Another Shot at the Government

Two posts ago, I attacked Medicare. In my last post, I pointed out how budget cuts have all but destroyed the effectiveness of the U.S. Food & Drug Administration. In this post, I’m going to talk about the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in another chapter about what happens when citizens entrust their health & wellness to the government.

There’s a great article from Men’s Health magazine posted on MSNBC health by Nina Teicholz entitled: “What if Bad Fat isn’t so Bad?” The thesis of the article is that there has never been a consensus in the medical community that high-fat diets shorten life-span and low-fat diets extend it. Much like the scientific “consensus” that humans are contributing to irreversible climate change proselytized in Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” (I urge you to read MIT Professor Richard Lindzen‘s Editorial (excerpt) in the Wall Street Journal), the “consensus” surrounding the American diet is a myth. More alarming is the fact that there has never been a causal connection established between saturated fat and heart disease…and there is countless correlational evidence to the contrary.

Still more alarming: these studies have been around for over three decades and the American Medical Association disagreed with Congress’ decision to make it government policy to support the supposed “diet-heart hypothesis” in 1977. Translation: Congress chose to make official diet recommendations, for the past 28 years (a revised food pyramid finally replaced the old one), based upon dubious science. And they did it knowing full well that many, many doctors, epidemiologists, and public health experts disagreed with the decision – which would (and did) affect American diets and American health. Why did the government choose to publish an official recommended diet to Americans when they didn’t have valid scientific conclusions? One likely possibility is that they had a competing interest: American farmers.

Remember the “four food groups” and the old Food Pyramid that recommended 6-11 servings of carbohydrates each day? It’s nearly undisputed now that lots of refined starches trick the body into producing extra insulin which tells the body to store energy as fat – and eating a high calorie diet dominated by carbs , rather than fat, has likely contributed to America’s staggering obesity problem. That’s right, the official recommended American diet changed the way we ate for the past thirty years, and 2/3 of Americans are now medically overweight. Why would the government recommend a diet that, in the beginning it knew wasn’t proven and along the way knew it was just plain wrong?

Well, I didn’t know this, and I suspect few other people did: the food pyramid was published by the USDA, not the FDA. The USDA’s role is to promote American agriculture, not the American diet. Dr. Walter Willett, a renowned medical doctor, public health expert, and tenured professor at Harvard, published a book in 2001 called “Eat, Drink and Be Healthy,” that pointed out this very fact. Dr. Willett attacks the USDA Food Pyramid. “At best, the USDA Pyramid offers wishy -washy, scientifically unfounded advice on an absolutely vital topic- what to eat. At worst, the misinformation contributes to overweight, poor health, and unnecessary early deaths. The thing to keep in mind about the USDA Pyramid is that it comes from the Department of Agriculture, the agency responsible for promoting American agriculture, not from agencies established to protect our health…And there’s the root of the problem- what’s good for some agricultural interests isn’t necessarily good for the people who eat their products.”

So it’s not a stretch to say that American agricultural lobby probably influenced Congress, in the way that lobbyists are known to influence, to ignore the American Medical Association’s dissent, and promote their products to Americans for thirty years. When a government sells out, someone wins and someone must lose. American agriculture scored a bid win, and the American waistline lost big.

What point could I possibly be trying to make, besides “the government can’t be everybody’s friend?” Here’s my point: government-run universal health care would be like giving someone with Dissociative Identity Disorder a white coat and declaring that he is your family’s doctor for life. He would suffer from multiple personalities, each with different fetishes, and he would have a lifetime tenure, regardless of his level of competence. The kicker is that you would never know which personality was present when he was diagnosing your child.

Any universal health care plan by the government is forever for sale, just like every other interest at Congress’ door.  And unlike standard health insurance, the government is prone to vote the deepest pocket, regardless of whether that deep pocket represents health care, or whether it represents the National Potato Council.

Chew on that…

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