True North

In this op-ed, John Marty argues that health care should be a community need, not a commodity. That wrong-headed thinking is the motivation behind his crusade for a constitutional amendment that would mandate “affordable health insurance.” Here’s how the amendment would read on November’s ballot:

“Shall the Minnesota Constitution be amended to state that every resident of Minnesota has the right to health care and that it is the responsibility of the governor and the legislature to implement all necessary legislation to ensure affordable health care? Yes? No?

Here’s how Sen. Marty argues that thinking of health insurance as a commodity is wrong:

Many politicians view it as a commodity, something that is bought and sold in the marketplace. “Bought,” that is, to the extent you can afford it. However, if you believe that all people deserve access to affordable health care, as two-thirds of Americans do believe, then there is a problem. Many people don’t earn enough to buy health care.

One thing that single-payer activists won’t discuss is that socialized medicine is part of the problem, not part of the solution. For instance, someone else has to pick up the costs when the VA negotiates (at gunpoint) with the pharmaceutical companies.

Another thing that single-payer activists won’t discuss is the impact that illegal immigrants have on the system. Anytime that someone goes to the ER, someone else has to pay for it, either through higher taxes or with cost shifting to insurance premiums and co-pays.

Here’s John Marty’s thoughts on what’s driving up costs:

Equally troubling, Minnesotans who have insurance still face astronomical health costs, and they would get little relief from this type of reform.

Let’s focus on government mandates. State legislators whine about the Fed’s passing unfunded mandates down to state legislatures but they don’t think twice about passing along their unfunded mandates to private businesses. It’s difficult thinking of a more unjustly regulated industry than medicine.

Despite these things, John Marty and like-minded legislators think that the solution to their imagined crisis is to put Minnesota’s health care system under legislators’ control.

Here’s another of Marty’s arguments for single-payer:

If health care were treated as a community need, when you were sick you would get the care you needed. And you would get sick less often, because you would receive preventive care and health education to assist you in taking responsibility for your health. As with police and fire protection, we all would pay for it, and we all would benefit from it.

The first sentence is accurate as far as it goes. What’s cleverly hidden is that it doesn’t say how long a wait you’d face to “get the care you needed.” It also assumes, incorrectly, that cutting the pharmaceuticals’ profits won’t have a negative effect on research and development spending. In fact, the American Medical Students Association admits that that will have an impact:

Although there are some advantages and some disadvantages to each system, universal health care confers the greatest number of advantages. They include:

• Every individual would receive necessary medical coverage, regardless of age, health, employment, or socio-economic status.
• Health care spending would decline because centralized billing procedures would reduce administrative overhead. Consequently, a larger percentage of the cost of health care would actually be spent on patient treatment.
• Increased access to preventive care and the ability of government to purchase prescription medications in bulk would also help drive down health care costs. However, the corresponding drop in revenue for pharmaceutical companies could lead to a reduction in overall research and development, slowing down technological advancement.
• Patients can choose their physician and physicians can choose the most appropriate treatment for their patients.
• There would be a removal of profit-motive in health care. The driving force behind the health industry would be patient care and not profit maximization.

For all his bluster, Sen. Marty is right about this part:

We end up paying more because people don’t have health care up front. We don’t focus on prevention.

It doesn’t take a complete overhaul of the health care industry to fix that. I just talked with Steve Gottwalt, who pointed out a couple interesting things:

Most of the uninsured are already eligible for state-subsidized health insurance probrams but they either haven’t signed up or simply don’t know that they’d qualify. I’d think that budgeting more for outreach would quickly remedy that situation.

Another thing Steve emphasized is that incenting people to buy preventive care would be a step in the right direction, possibly through the tax code.

I recently read that Minnesota’s population is 6.5 million people and that 91 percent of Minnesotans have health insurance. Of the people that don’t, 59 percent are eligible for existing government health insurance programs. Let’s do the math on that. There are approximately 600,000 people uninsured in Minnesota, of which 354,000 are eligible for existing programs. That means only 246,000 Minnesotans are (a) without health insurance and (b) not eligible for taxpayer subsidized health care. That means approximately 3.8 percent of Minnesotans aren’t insured or eligible for taxpayer-subsidized health insurance.

Frankly, that doesn’t qualify as a crisis to me, especially when Minnesota has ranked as the first or second ranked state in overall health. In fact, other states are coming to us asking how we do such a remarkable, consistent job with our health.

With all due respect to Sen. Marty, I’m unwilling to concede that government would do a better job running the health care industry.

Many middle-income families have insurance but are still only one serious illness away from bankruptcy. Our businesses, schools and government face skyrocketing health-care costs.

It is time for Minnesota to make sure that every Minnesotan has access to the health care that they need. By treating health care as a community need, not as an optional commodity, we will live healthier lives and save money, too.

It’s impossible to get everyone covered whether it’s through government, private insurance or a combination thereof. That’s the first reality that must be faced. Another undeniable reality is that when government negotiates the price of perscription medications, the pharmaceutical companies don’t just give up on recovering the profit; they get it back by charging us more. The bad part about government dictating the prices that pharmaceuticals can charge is that it limits research and development.

John Marty and his allies won’t accept as fact that taking away profits, whether it’s from pharmaceutical companies or health care professionals, reduces the availability of new products and reduces the quality of care given.

Single-payer is nothing more than a race to the bottom for quality healthcare. Considering how many cures we’ve developed in the last decade, I’m wondering why we need a dramatic change of any sort.

Cross-posted at Let Freedom Ring.