A Prophetic Look at National Health Care
Dale Ahlquist, Editorial — Posted by Dale Ahlquist on February 20, 2012G.K. Chesterton considered himself a member of the Liberal Party until 1912. As he would later say, he did not leave the Liberal Party. It left him. He believed in something called liberty, the idea that people should be able to make most decisions for themselves, especially the most basic and most important decisions, and not have such decisions made for them by anyone else, especially by the government. He believed, as a liberal, that the State’s role was to preserve liberty, not take it away.
What happened in 1912? The Liberal Party, which held power in Parliament, passed The Health Insurance Act. Every working man was required to have part of his wages withheld to pay for a national health insurance. The funding was to be further supplemented by a tax on every employer. Sound familiar?
Chesterton’s objections to the Insurance Act were threefold. First, it was anti-democratic in practice. The vast majority of the English population was against it. It was being passed against their will, but—so the argument went—for their own good. Second, it was anti-democratic in principle. It divided the populace into two permanent castes: those who labor, and those who pay for the labor. Chesterton called this what it is: slavery. Third, Chesterton saw the Act as paving the way to the State seizing more power, more influence, more interference in everyone’s daily lives. Sound familiar?
About a century later, here in America, we are looking at essentially the same thing that Chesterton was looking at. We watched as a National Health Care program was passed in utter defiance of public support, rammed through the legislative process by one party rather than by any sort of consensus. We have also watched the reinforcement of a system comprised of employers and employees, of wage-earners rather than independent, self-sufficient and truly “self-employed” citizens. And we have also watched the unimaginable growth of government as it has insinuated itself into every aspect of our lives.
One of Chesterton’s strongest objections to the Insurance Act was the increase in taxes to those who could scarcely afford to have any of their income taken from them, even if it was to be used for something specific like health care. The tax prevented a man from paying for other needs he had that might be just as important as medical care. He was being forced to pay for medical care that he might not need. What other things that he did not need would the State decide he must also pay for?
Chesterton pointed out that a compulsory Health Insurance Act was first passed in Germany. It followed another compulsory act that was also first passed in Germany: compulsory education. Chesterton was a vocal opponent of state-sponsored compulsory education, for the same reasons he was against a national health insurance. It was an attack on freedom. It gave the government too much power, and it took away a basic freedom from the citizen. The liberal argument was that the State was providing a valuable service. Chesterton’s counter-argument was that though the State was providing education, it was the State’s education. Though it was providing medicine, it was a forced medicine. With a compulsory insurance, he argued, people were being forced to pay to be protected against themselves. People are often willing to trade freedom for security. But the problem is that it is usually someone else trading our freedom for our security.
Although Chesterton found himself allied with the conservatives on the issue of health care, he might point out now that one of the reasons we have gotten into the present mess was that health care became an industry, controlled by large corporations rather than independent practitioners, and every industry tends to grow till it forms an alliance with big government. When health care started becoming too expensive, the solution was supposed to be health insurance. But insurance quickly made health care even more expensive. On the one hand, the medical industry stopped worrying about being affordable; on the other, a new layer of private bureaucracy and overhead was added that also needed to be paid for. Is there a solution? Yes. There is one drastic solution.
But sometimes issues of health require drastic measures. The health care system needs radical surgery. The honest thing to do is do away with health insurance. Doctors and hospitals and clinics should start selling a product that people can afford, and that they should not have to buy unless they actually need the product. It should not cost a thousand dollars to treat an ingrown toenail. But it does. It should not cost $30,000 to set a broken arm. But it does. Ours is a system that cannot be sustained. That is why the government feels justified to step in.
Chesterton prophesied this very scenario. He warns that the State cannot become a Universal Provider without becoming just another big shop. The one thing we’ve seen about big shops is that they collapse. We can avoid the big collapse if we start getting small again. We might even get healthy again.
—Dale Ahlquist for the editorial board of Gilbert Magazine
*This editorial appeared in the April/May 2010 issue of Gilbert Magazine, which you can read in its entirety right here.
Digg This
Bookmark
Stumble
13 Comments
The problem with your solution, of course, is in trying to ascertain where to begin. Currently, with some 45 million Americans without health care insurance, and therefore access to it on a regular basis, the takedown of the present system would cause incredible harm to the society in general.
I think there is a very good example of affordable health care in existence in this country, which is the non-profit Kaiser-Permanente system on the West Coast. It is fully self-contained, depending on no outside components, from billing, to pharmacy, to lab, to surgical suite, in the delivery of health care to its members. It evolved out of the World War II shipyards and continues today.
Everybody, in their heart of hearts, hates the idea of Obamacare, but they hate it less than having pro-corporate conservative lawmakers crusade for the insurance companies’ divine right to bar the average citizen from access to affordable health care. Obamacare is the monster American pro-corporate/anti-citizen culture has created. Wonder what Chesterton would say about the personhood of corporations? I think he’d see it instantly for what it is: quite literally insane.
The Affordable Care Act is disliked by Americans in the abstract, but its individual features are popular. In other words, the more people know about it in detail, the better they like it. And they should.
One important reform is to restrict fee-for-service billing, which has greatly inflated medical costs in this country. The Mayo Clinic did away with it voluntarily and found that it was able greatly to reduce costs without reducing the quality of care. Similar savings are expected for Medicare and Medicaid.
The great reform, of course, is to provide universal coverage for all Americans. To do this, yes, it requires everyone to buy health insurance — just as states require everyone to buy automobile insurance. In each case, the public has a compelling interest that justifies the mandate. The financial chaos that would result from having the roads filled with uninsured drivers requires no explanation. The current situation in health care, with millions of Americans going withoutcoverage, has more complex consequences. One is that almost 45,000 Americans die every year as a result of being uninsured and so not being able to get colonoscopies, PAP smears, blood pressure medication, and all the other routine benefits that the insured can take for granted. Another is that the uninsured end up going to the ER for treatment of catastrophic health problems — ultimately, at the public’s expense. Here, we can see that making health care universal is not only the compassionate course, it is also cost-effective: it costs far less to provide someone with blood-pressure medication than to treat them for a stroke or heart attack, for example.
I don’t believe we can know for sure what Chesterton would have thought of the Affordable Care Act — it is different from anything that they have or every proposed in the UK. It does not make the government the health care provider, as it is in the UK. It is a complex hybrid public/private system, more like what Switzerland and the Netherlands have set up. It has a Rube Goldberg feeling to it that reflects the compromises required to get it passed. And it is something that I believe fans of Chesterton, and followers of Christ, can support with gratitude.
Problem with the “Affordable Healthcare Act”
The reason the government intervened in housing was to make housing more “affordable.” Result: housing prices went up dramatically because demand far outstripped supply. Taxpayers got creamed. If Obamacare is not rescinded, the same thing will happen. Demand will far outstrip supply (taxpayers’ ability to pay) leading to rationing. It will lead to eugenics and euthanasia. This is not about healthcare, it is about creating dependency and through dependency power and control over people’s lives. It absolutely must not stand.
A friend of mine is having surgery today for colon cancer. The cancer has spread to some of the surrounding lymph nodes, which makes his recovery (read: survival) problematic. He delayed getting the colonoscopy that detected the cancer for a full year, because he had exhausted his benefits on a hernia operation. Had he had adequate benefits, and gotten the colonoscopy a year earlier, his prognosis might be better.
Two years ago, I spent much of every day during a week’s visit to relatives in Columbus, calling here, there, and everywhere, trying to find free cataract treatment for an indigent woman my family knows. A told me to call B, B told me to call C, and C told me to call A. This woman had gotten one thing for free: an examination by an eye doctor who told her that if she didn’t get her cataracts taken care of, she would go blind. Two years later, she is nearly blind. I feel guilty that I didn’t just front the $8K to get it taken care of myself.
So, one friend may die because of insufficient coverage; an acquaintance is going blind, because of not having any coverage. A decent society does not tolerate this.
The Affordable Care Act has done more than anything other proposal to maintain Medicare and Medicaid in solvency, and to extend health care benefits to people who do not have them. It does not make Americans “serfs of the nanny state”. It is simply the decent and right thing to do, and we it is inexcusable in us not to have done it sooner.
– in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had arrfwae, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance.And in America, they wage constant war, and do everything possible to make the rich richer off the backs of the poor and middle class, but they produced Bell, Edison, Ford, jazz, rock and roll, moon landings, and The Age of Technology.In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce?The cuckoo clock.And mandated health care.’ *Bobo is one of the most respected men who aren’t blind, and yet can’t see. In America, they’re called pundit’s. I call them Pun-twit’s. I don’t respect him, because he’s willfully stupid, and will ignore any and all factual evidence that’s contrary to his BELIEF.And he’s got well paid perch’s on radio, TV and the NY Times to spout his bullshit. He even wrote a novel about his conservative world view a book that was about as badly panned as any you could find even in his own newspaper (lol!). It’s like Ayn Rand in YuppieLand.’ I wouldn’t know, because not only won’t I read it because life’s too short, but I wouldn’t even have it in my house if it was the last book in the world and the kitchen table rocked. And did anyone notice when our health care costs started to spike up and diverge from where it was kind of lumped together with the other countries?Yes, is was the great, stupendous, great, cheerful, great, optimistic, great, great, President St. Ronnie of the Free Markets. Did I mention how great he was?That was obviously snark, because, whenever you look at any charts that shows America and the middle class slipping, and the rich getting richer, it always starts to go up dramatically under Reagan, and then spike like a rocket launch under Little Boots.I tremble at the thought of a Republican President, House, and Senate, any time soon. And the SCOTUS won’t be of any help because it’s already been privatized. And this nightmare may come iaround n 2013 if we don’t work hard.*From one of my favorite movies, the GREAT (and I mean it this time) The Third Man.
Chesterton believed and advocated for the freedom to die in the street and be stupid.
Thank you for that thoughtful and informative comment, Karen. You have really enhanced the discussion.
Comment as you will. Feel free to agree or disagree — and back up whatever position you take. But if you ever try to post anything like this again, I will personally relegate you to the spam folder for good.
Agree or disagree.
History is history even with clever changes.
Results are mostly the same but how they came about and why are as important as what happened!
Envy, greed and power.
Healthcare has become a multifaceted problem that has gotten out of control because it has become an industry. First the definition of healthcare can be broadened to any medical procedure for any private benefit a person can want.Second insurance and lawyers have seen to it that charities have been removed from the equation. Thirdly the government and insurance regulations on the INDUSTRY has inflated the cost to prohibit out-of-pocket purchases of healthcare. Universal insurance will continue to make the industry richer while making the product cost out of reach for those who need it most. This is typical of most structural causes of sin; in the name of preference for the poor which the Catholic Social doctrine proclaims has made the solidarity with the poor more difficult, has increased the number of poor, has destroyed the family ( its easier for a single mother to get government benefits), spawned a medical murder industry to get rid of unwanted children, and lets the government steal liberty by handing out IT’S defined rights. This is what JP II defined as the culture of death.
The weight of corruption is being shifted from one monopoly to another. The gov’t is simply monopolizing by being used to consolidate health as well as to solve the costs which are the result of redundant overhead to justify unrealistic profits. What if someone has put money into their insurance and later leaves that insurer? Does that mean he or she cannot take the savings with that insurer and transfer it to another one? Yes, profit has it’s proper necessity. But, it should not deprive nor be form of usury preventing someone to have the best means to have affordable coverage (as transferring one’s invested money in an insurer to another one.) In other words, a person’s costs would be quite low if they could hold on every cent they’ve put into their insurer.
The part of Chesterton’s argument that struck me like a brick was his critique of compulsory education. He said, yes, it is education, but it is the STATE’S education. With health insurance compulsion, it is the STATE’S health care, and thier idea of health care inlcudes mandatory contraceptive coverage (insane), sterilizations (insane), and probably abortion in the future. I don’t want anything to do with that and If I am an employer, I am forced to do so!
(Insane)
Robert K. You hit it out of the park. It’s as simple as that!!!!