George McGovern was my generation’s Barack Obama. I worked in his campaign in 1972 with all the enthusiasm for hope and change that we saw in Obama’s campaign. I telephoned voters, attended rallies, and was a delegate to the Democratic Party’s district convention in Dallas.
McGovern was going to get us out of an unpopular war and transform government. He talked about transparency, and he had a government program in mind for just about every problem, even healthcare. He is still one of my personal heroes. Look him up – you’ll be impressed.
I’m a lot older now, and I usually vote Republican, but I still hold many of the same core beliefs I held then. I believe people should be free to be different, to create lives that allow them to reach their maximum potential. I believe people should treat one another with compassion and that the concept of “community” is a beautiful thing.
Which is also why I believe that a government-run healthcare system is a bad idea.
Let’s start with personal freedom. Under the current system, no one forces you to participate. You can choose not to be insured, or you can choose one of more than 600 health insurance policies offered by at least 15 different insurance companies. You can see any doctor you want, decide what procedures you will or won’t have, and make your own payment arrangements. Under a government plan, you’ll be told what features your policy will have, use the doctors they tell you to use, have only the procedures the government allows, and pay whatever taxes they tell you to pay.
Then there’s creativity. Sometime in the late ’70s, an older friend was telling me about a new procedure he’d agreed to try where a balloon-like device was inserted into his arteries to push the bad stuff inside them up against the artery walls to improve his circulation and possibly avoid a stroke. Angioplasty is now quite common, but it was new and experimental then. Would a government-run plan allow the spending of scarce resources on something unproven like that, or would doctors be limited to today’s “best practices”? What would happen to creativity and innovation in medicine? Would we be forever stuck in 2009?
But what about compassion, you might say. Are there people genuinely in need of serious medical care that they just can’t afford? Should we as a society help them?
Yes and yes. In fact, we already do. We help them by paying high property taxes to pay for public medical facilities. We help them by paying high insurance premiums to allow hospitals to stay in business even though a large percentage of the cost of the care they provide goes unreimbursed, either by Medicare or the patients themselves. The money has to come from somewhere if hospitals are going to stay in business. Hospitals make up their losses by overcharging patients who do have insurance. That’s one of the factors driving up premium costs. People who buy health insurance and pay property taxes are being compassionate; they just may not know it.
One argument for a government-run healthcare system that I hear a lot these days has to do with executive greed, which some have even cited as a reason not to buy health insurance. I understand the emotion, but think about this: If you’re ever seriously injured in a car crash, literally dozens of highly trained professionals, using enormously expensive equipment, will spring into action to help you. Doctors, nurses, paramedics, maybe even helicopter pilots, and a lot of support staff behind the scenes are working to save lives. That’s “community,” and it’s a beautiful thing.
Most of those people have families. How will they be able to provide for them if you don’t have insurance to pay them for coming to your rescue? Are you really hurting the executives by withholding your business, or are you making it difficult for the professionals to help the next accident victim in your community? What about your own family? Could they pay your medical expenses for you? Should they have to?
Maybe owning your own health insurance policy is one way to do your part for the community, just like helping out at a food kitchen or on a Habitat for Humanity project or even recycling. Think about it.
The current healthcare system isn’t perfect. It was put together piecemeal over a long time, and it continually needs adjusting. A brand-new government-run system wouldn’t be perfect, either. There would be lots of unforeseen consequences in the transition, and real people would be hurt in the process. If the government’s grand experiment fails, we will have lost our current healthcare system forever.
The current system involves a lot of compassion, along with creativity and personal freedom. Let’s keep it – and keep working to improve it.
Ron Bridges is a longtime Fort Worth insurance broker.
