The President and his Democratic Congress, unimpeded by a jaw-dropping 37% approval rating—the lowest in 20 years [1]—have been nonplussed by a uniquely cultural rebuke to their health care proposal which they may never understand: Americans are viscerally opposed to bigger government.

The majority of the country understands this about the otherwise abstruse proposals: extending government influence over 18% of our economy and our personal welfare will damage a health care system that is considered to be among the best in world, because it will disassemble the very aspects that have made it so advanced without addressing the deficiencies that cease further progress.

Health care needs improvement, there is no debate. What should be debated is how the reform is effected, because the “how” will either extend fundamental principles that have served our economy for two centuries, or it will supplant them with an irreversible forfeiture of our individual freedoms. There are ways to address the system’s shortcomings that are consistent with free market principles without disturbing what works or unleashing an unnecessary expansion of government. Here, then, are five reforms you won’t hear the President propose, but can foster meaningful debate and give the country real choice if consolidated into a counterposing plan.

1- To lower medical costs, increase supply. We have one doctor for every 416 persons as compared to 1 to 300 for France, Germany, Sweden, and Australia [2]. We need to encourage the licensing of more doctors, and allow portability of their license from state to state. If I can be licensed to drive in New York and get a traffic ticket in Oregon, why can’t a doctor licensed in Oregon practice in New York if that is where the demand is? Testing and licensing alternative forms of medicine that are widely accepted in other parts of the world will also help increase supply in the United States.

2- To lower insurance costs, make policies personal, portable, and open. There is no justification for individuals and families to buy health insurance through their employers. This anachronistic system penalizes smaller businesses, according to a Kauffman-RAND study [3]. Entrepreneurs, the driving engine of our economy, and their employees can accrue neither the tax benefits available to larger companies nor premium advantages of big groups. It is also uneconomic to restrict policy acquisition by state. Make the market for insurance more competitive by allowing individuals to buy insurance in an open, nationwide market, and offer the tax advantages directly to them rather than to the employer.

3- Allow derivative insurance products and financial incentives for maintaining good health. Start by allowing insurance coverage of licensed providers anywhere in the country—even in the world, as some companies are now exploring [4]. The artificial provider networks insurance companies created injure competition. Reinstating individual responsibility for one’s care and supporting the doctor-patient relationship, by making the patient responsible to pay his provider directly with the insurance proceeds, empowers the patient to manage both his health and costs. From there we might consider an annual build-up of cash value for unused policy benefits that can be applied to future premiums, to future medical expenditures, or even to long term care as we get older. The health savings account should be made as flexible, manageable, and survivable as an IRA. 

4- Limit liability in medical malpractice to all but the most egregious negligence. Direct expenditures on malpractice amount to 1% of health care costs, but the indirect costs are difficult to quantify [5]. There can be almost no doubt that we spend nearly twice per capita on health care as most industrialized countries [6] partly because of the endless battle we tolerate between doctors and lawyers. The ultimate payer of defensive medicine is the patient—in the form of increased premiums for both doctor and patient, increased medical fees, and redundant treatments. This extraneous demand for services drives costs up.

5- To help the poor and uninsured, encourage self-reliance and participation in the private system available to others. Economist Arthur Laffer recently took a page from Milton Friedman’s book and suggested we offer vouchers to the poor with which they may purchase medical insurance on the open market [7]. One wonders if, when faced with such alternatives to the “public option”, liberals will adhere more to the objective of helping the poor than to the unspoken pursuit of expanding government.

When an industry seems to have broken down or run out of control, we tend to think of all free markets as venal. Defenders of capitalism should not lose heart. Economic sectors fail their constituents to the extent they deviate from market forces, either by overregulation or self-accumulation of power. The counterargument to centralizing control over the economy is to recalibrate industry toward market and competitive forces. The antidote to bigger government is freer and greater choice for the consumer.

For more defense and celebration of capitalism: http://twitter.com/freecapitalism

[1] http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/washington-whispers/2009/09/02/poll-lowest-congressional-approval-in-two-decades.html

[2] OECD Health Data 2009

[3] http://rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/2008/RAND_TR559.pdf

[4] http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/125/medical-leave.html

[5] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125193312967181349.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

[6] OECD Health Data 2009

[7] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204619004574324361508092006.html

Is the new President campaigning against Christianity or is he only trying to be inclusive and respectful of other faiths?  This is the question that discomfits Americans who had always learned and always believed in the Christian tradition and foundation of our country.  To respect all faiths is a laudatory grace; to deny the influence and spirit of a faith practiced by the overwhelming majority of the country one leads is disgraceful.

Consider that in June 2006 Obama said, “Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation – at least, not just. We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, and a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.”  (FactCheck; YouTube).  And in July 2007 he told CBN News, “America is no longer just a Christian nation”.

One might tolerate a candidate’s flirtations with studies in comparative religions, perhaps in recognition of the changing religious profile of the United States of late (largely due to a failed immigration policy), or one might rationalize his reaction to the doctrinaire and often unforgiving positions assumed by the evangelist wing of Christianity which for too long meddled beyond their mission to save souls to encumber the politics of the GOP.  But a President’s responsibility requires a supererogation in contrast to a candidate’s ambitions, and a requisite honoring of American history, tradition, and the realities of the super-majority Christianity comprises in our country.

Yet, as President, Obama recently carried his three year message while in Turkey, “ ‘One of the great strengths of the United States’ is that it does not consider itself ‘a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.’ ” (CNN)  No, Mr. President, the great strength of the United States is this: because we are a Christian nation we are tolerant of other faiths as long as they are bound by the same ideals and set of values.  Contrast our tolerance and acceptance with nations who are openly and predominantly non-Christian, something you might have done, diplomatically, during your European trip to reaffirm Western ideals.

Are we a Christian nation?  According to the American Religious Identification Survey 2008, 76% of the population identify themselves as Christian.  That is a number that can make even the most self-assured politician salivate.  The original colonies and territories of the United States, with the exception of Virginia, were settled by Europeans escaping persecution for Christian practices that were not tolerated in their home country.  And in a case before the Supreme Court, Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 143 U.S. 457 (1892), Justice David Brewer declared in a unanimous decision, “These, and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation.”  Brewer’s argument is replete with examples that firmly establish the Christian tradition in American political practice.

What about the oft-cited “separation of Church and State” in the First Amendment?  Nowhere in the Constitution do these words appear.  The exact language is, “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, …”  Secularist are all too eager to parse the phrase and conveniently leave out the second clause.  The original purpose was not to create a God-less society, but precisely the contrary: to protect free expression of faith.  Here is Thomas Jefferson, writing to the Danbury Baptists who were concerned about government intrusion into religion:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.

Obama’s solicitous exclamations about America’s non-Christianity that contradict majority American practice and belief, combined with a misreading of the Constitution by the followers of the former Constitutional professor are tragically being manifested in outrageous demands, that violate at least the spirit of the free exercise clause.  Before Obama accepted an invitation to speak this month at Georgetown University, a Jesuit school, The White House requested signs and symbols of Jesus Christ be covered up  (NBC News).  What is more unconscionable than that request is Georgetown’s acquiescence in it.  Perhaps the Catholics who run Georgetown forgot the words of St. Paul to Timothy, “If we deny Him, He will also deny us.”

Denial of our Christian heritage, denial of history, denial of the very values about which the President bragged to his Muslim interlocutors … we have managed to allow a Christian nation—yes Mr. President, it is—to be turned upside-down by a small minority who understand neither faith nor American tradition.

Michael Avari

http://bloggernews.net/120552

http://americancivility.us