health care in hillaryland
by Truman Washington
Published: January 1, 2008
Hillary. The name inspires visions of lollipop forest, rivers of chocolate and magic hospitals that don’t need money to function. It’s the perfect world. Doesn’t the following conversation fill you with warmth towards the Senator from the State of Disillusionment:
Patient: Thanks for the exam doctor, how much do I owe you?
Doctor: Well, nothing of course. Hillary Clinton is our president.
Patient: That’s right, and doctors don’t need to make money now that Hillary is in charge.
Doctor: You’re correct. It’s a good thing too because now that I don’t need money I won’t have to pay the extra high taxes she just created. Boy, it’s great to be in health care these days.
Think of a world where hospitals don’t need money to function. Can you imagine? Oh, the joys of HillaryCare.
You may ask me, “What are you talking about? I’ve never heard Senator Clinton say that her health plan would eliminate the necessity for money in the health care industry. I’ve only heard her mention making health care affordable, available, and reliable.” And you would be right. That is her promise. But her promise is based on premises as make believe as a stack of Monopoly hundred dollar bills.
I mostly take offense (that’s right, the very idea is offensive) to her second talking point. It is displayed on her website HillaryClinton.com as follows:
Available: No discrimination. The insurance companies can’t deny you coverage if you have a pre-existing condition.
So Hillary will ensure no one goes without health care. She also promises “that no American is denied coverage, refused renewal, unfairly priced out of the market, or forced to pay excessive insurance company premiums.” Now let me tell you what scares me. Healthcare is a business. Just like Disneyland, your local grocery store or corner lemonade stand. So when you start requiring health insurance companies to insure people without regard to profitability you create an unstable business. Now raise your hand if you want an unstable health industry.
The cost of health care, and I mean what it actually costs with profits aside, will not go away no matter what Hillary believes. Tax credits won’t make it any cheaper to set a broken bone. Nor will it make it cheaper for the doctor to go to school to learn to set the bone. But Hillary likes to pretend that she can magically lower these costs and decide exactly how much money health care companies can make:
Setting: The newly built throne room in the White Palace. Hillary sits in attendance giving audience to the nation’s health care executives.
Hillary: You (insert name of insurance company here) are gouging the middle class. And so I declare you shall make no more than 1% profit. So let it be written, so let it be done.
Hillary chuckles softly as she slashes away at the bad insurance companies margins.
Honestly, the only way Hillary’s plan could work is through massive government intervention; so we will have either government run health care, or highly subsidized health care providers. We all know the government is awful at business. Show me a single industry where government intervention has improved the quality of that company’s product while lowering costs. It doesn’t work, EVER. The Government is not a business. It has shown time and again that it has no concern for profitability, margins or product improvement. Every social program our government has set up throws away millions and billions of dollars a year in wasteful bureaucracies. It’s silly to think the government can run health care better than it is being run.
Investigate unsavory business tactics. Levy fines for non-compliance. Create better competition in the industry. But don’t make the companies insure otherwise uninsurable people. Don’t determine pricing for them, or make them answerable to a bigger more wasteful bureaucracy. It might work in Hillaryland, but this is the USA.
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