The Real Opposition To Obamacare
The Real Opposition To Obamacare
It isn't just the economic price that's troubling so many people, although that certainly is a factor. AEI president Arthur C. Brooks, writing in the WSJ, gets it right, that the proposed health care "reform" runs contrary to three core values of American free enterprise culture -- individual choice, personal accountability, and rewards for ambition:
First, Americans recoil at policies that strip choices from citizens and pass them to bureaucrats. ObamaCare systematically does so. The current proposals in Congress would effectively limit choice across the entire spectrum of health care: What kind of health insurance citizens can buy, what kind of doctors they can see, what kind of procedures their doctors will perform, what kind of drugs they can take, and what treatment options they may have.Meanwhile, ObamaCare would limit the ability of people to choose affordable insurance coverage through less-comprehensive, consumer-driven insurance plans. And it wouldn't allow Americans to shop for better health-care plans from out-of-state carriers.
Second, Americans believe we should be responsible for the consequences of our actions. Many citizens bitterly view the auto and Wall Street bailouts as gifts to people who took imprudent risks, imperiled the entire economic system, and now appear to be walking away from the mess.
Similarly, Americans are cold to a health-care system that effectively rewards individuals for waiting to get insurance until they get sick--subsidizing their coverage by taxing those who responsibly carry insurance in good times and bad.
On its face, the reformers' promise to provide health insurance to nearly all, regardless of pre-existing conditions, is appealing. But as most instinctively realize, if people don't have to worry about carrying insurance until they need it, many won't buy it. Already, the Census Bureau tells us that 21% of the uninsured are in households earning at least $75,000. Although there are certainly plausible reasons for this in some cases, this phenomenon will worsen under ObamaCare.
Third, ObamaCare discourages personal ambition. The proposed reforms will institute a set of government mandates, price controls and other strictures that will make highly trained specialists, drug researchers and medical device makers less valued now and in the future. Americans understand that when you take away the incentive to make money while saving lots of lives, the cures, therapies and medical innovations of tomorrow may never be discovered.
All these countries with socialized medicine benefit greatly from American innovation. Without incentive here for invention, and with American doctors getting squeezed, and forced to make meager incomes (especially vis a vis the level of training and the seriousness of their jobs), the quality of care and innovation around the world can't help but dip enormously.
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