Conservatives, Markets, and Health Care
February 27th, 2008 by Peter SudermanLet me associate myself with J.P. Freire’s remarks about the GOP framing of health care issues (via Megan McArdle).
Rep. Camp recited a good number of the talking points I’ve heard among the right regarding healthcare. The problem is that the debate is about a feel-good issue (the health of a family), and Republicans tend to highlight the negatives of the other side rather than emphasize positive points. Healthcare beat reporters want to hear the story of how you’re going to help that little baby with medical needs, or the old lady who’s putting aside surgery because she has to pay her electric bill.
Unfortunately, Rep. Camp stuck with the point that the “45 million Americans who are uninsured” is really an overblown statistic. It’s worth mentioning, to be sure, but numbers won’t change this debate (otherwise, no one would be talking about socialized medicine anyway).
Instead, explaining how a Republican plan would enable people to not be tied to jobs they don’t like just because they want health insurance is a good way to go — something Rep. Camp brought up later in the discussion. You can also tie in the fact that a Democratic plan would hurt the economy, thus forcing people to stay in the very jobs they want to move away from.
It’s obviously true that conservatives need to spend a lot more time talking about the good that freer markets can do in health care. One often hears that “a free market isn’t working,” but the health care market is anything but free. So there are certainly a number of actions that could be taken to instill greater adaptability and competition into the markets – letting people buy health care across state lines, for one, and untying care from employment for another.
But let me put in a good word for negativity as well. It’s still quite important for conservatives to spend the time necessary to deconstruct liberal plans. Making sure people understand that those plans won’t work as promised — in fact can’t work as promised — serves the important function of making people skeptical of government-run health care, and makes it far tougher for those plans to be put in place. In some ways, really, it’s just about holding the line. Passing real, pro-market reforms is a good goal, but sometimes, it’s worthwhile to spend some effort making sure things don’t get any worse either.
February 27th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
I’m curious, why don’t you advocate the same approach to police, fire stations, roads and sewers, that you do for health care? We’re talking about things that are services for the public, right? So why don’t you advocate the same thing for other “public services,” eh?
Really, let’s look at this on its face, dude. The goal of the insurance industry is to make a profit for its shareholders, which means that it must provide the least amount of care for the most amount of money. Period. That’s what for-profit health care is. You think that’s a good system? Fine. But only the other people with Ayn Rand posters on their walls are going to agree with you.
Tell you what: you disclose how much money insurance carriers have given FW for the past five years, and then give your pitch. I don’t believe you’re honest about anything you write about this, because you’re funded by the very people who’d be harmed by a sensible health care policy. We all know why you don’t want to tell us how much money they gave you, and it has nothing to do with “donor privacy.” Responsible journalists (and bloggers) reveal who writes their paychecks. Where do you fall?
February 27th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
I don’t support a private approach to police or the military because I do believe that a functioning civil society needs to maintain a monopoly on the use of force, and because I’m not convinced by the cases for private security markets. (See David Friedman’s interesting but not entirely compelling case here: http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Libertarian/Machinery_of_Freedom/MofF_Chapter_29.html)
As for the donors, FreedomWorks respects its donors requests for confidentiality; that, I think, should be their choice — not anyone else’s.
More to the point, I’m not intimately involved in the details of our fundraising efforts. As a general rule, I’m not aware of the particulars of who our donors are, so I’m not sure your line of inquiry would prove fruitful.
I also think it should be pointed out that in many cases, health insurance companies are actually in favor of regulation and state-funded health care programs.
Here’s a passage, for example, from a paper by Michael Cannon on why health insurance companies supported a huge expansion of SCHIP:
–
“The “bootleggers” behind SCHIP expansion include those who stand to gain financially from greater government subsidies for health insurance and health care. They include several lobbying groups: America’s Health Insurance Plans, and the insurers it represents; the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and the drug manufacturers it represents; the American Medical Association and the physicians it represents; and the Federation of American Hospitals and the for-profit hospitals it represents. State officials who support SCHIP expansion, such as California’s Governor Schwarzenegger and the rest of the National Governors Association, also belong in the bootleggers category because increasing federal SCHIP spending benefits them politically: it enables them to provide new subsidies to voters at a fraction of the cost.”
–
So I’d be careful about thinking that industry is automatically opposed to government intervention; in many cases, they actively drive regulations schemes in hopes of profiting from them.
(That paper can be found here: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8697)
February 27th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
Exactly, dude. It’s called “gaming the system.” thing is, those same companies use organizations like yours to produce opinion pieces and Wayne-Brough-approved whitepapers in order to get what they want. They use large donations to organizations like yours, who tell you exactly what to write about.
You may well are unaware of your organization’s donors. That strikes me as odd, because if I worked for a “think tank,” I’d sure as hell want to know who was responsible for signing my paychecks. Especially if I wanted my work to stand up to scrutiny outside its niche market. The leader of your organization is a principal in a lobbying firm, while you link sycophantically to every single speech you can find of his, yet you’re not in the least bit curious as to who actually paid his $1/2 million salary last year from FW alone?
Don’t you think I’m well within my rights to be a little skeptical about a blog run by an organization originally funded by an energy company and run by a well-known lobbyist? Indeed, aren’t I well within my rights to wonder why any company would want its contributions to a free-market think tank to be anonymous? Does that make any sense at all? (Even MoveOn coughed up the docs proving Soros didn’t fund them.) Even further, since I can see what you spend your money on, shouldn’t I be a little suspicious that your supposed “free-market” organization funded an Oregon effort to interfere with lawyer’s fees, in direct opposition to everything you claim to stand for?
So, you are saying that your donors have requested their donations be made privately. That’s interesting, since I don’t have the option to request that on your donation page. So they must have made that request formally. So if I start calling insurance companies whom I have information gave to your organization, and they tell me they made no such request for privacy, are they lying, or are you?
(You’re pretty good at changing the subject, too. Note that I didn’t once suggest we have a free-market solution for the military, but that’s what you chose to argue with me about. Something I didn’t even suggest! And you left, untouched, my suggestions about free-market solutions to firehouses, roads and sewers, etc.)
February 27th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
The GOP has no plan for fixing the health care mess that we’re in, period. Their “plan” is simply more of the same failed policies of the past. No one will be forced to stay in any bad job by any Democratic plan that I’m aware of. The rest of the Western world has made a TON of more progress on this issue than we have…it’s a shame too.
“why don’t you advocate the same approach to police, fire stations, roads and sewers, that you do for health care?”
Some conservatives do Sickle…as do some for military actions these days.
February 27th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
These guys aren’t conservatives, guy. They’re lobbyists pretending to be “grassroots” organizers. Hell, Suderman will rail against environmentalist fearmonging in the same week that Kinnan tells us we’re all going to get cancer and be killed by CAFE standards or some such nonsense. I want these guys to tell the truth about themselves. Maybe Suderman doesn’t know who his donors are, but I’ll bet Kinnan does. And I’m positive that not ALL of their donors make “requests for confidentiality.” Who are the loud and proud free-market folks, then?
How about this, Peter? How many of your donors are also clients of Dick Armey’s lobbying firm? That should be pretty easy to come up with. It’s just a number.
February 27th, 2008 at 11:12 pm
Greeting I have not been around for a while, and it is good to see that the debate is still alive.
Beyond who pays for the freedomtalks.org website and its staff, the real debate should be around where the line between a public service and a private one should be drawn. It seems that there is no discussion on who is responsible to pay for things like police, education, fire protection, army, roads and public infrastructure. Other more controversial subjects are: energy, transportation and health care. Each country on the world seems to have dealth with this issues in a different way.
The health care issue is the most problematic of all, because most of us can pay without problems our electrical bills, or get enough money to pay for the bus or taxi or gasoline for our cars so we really don’t mind using our own money to pay for those things. However I am hard pressed to find anyone that can pay out of pocket a typical night in a hospital, or a visit to the ER room (the last one for my wife for instance cost around 6000 dollars for less that an hour of service) and maternity wise the cost of delivering a baby in the US health care system is around of 20000 dollars total. So how in the hell are we suppose to pay for those things ?
The answer in the US has been the health care industry, they thrive in our inability to pay for medical services upfront. The more expensive the service is, the more money a health insurance company makes. It is the complete opposite of a free market. The health care insurance industry exists at all because of the broken fundamentals of suply and demand when it comes to health care services, and I think that is the issue that needs to be addressed first. We need to find ways to lower the total cost of health care services and put it on par with any other service that consumers rutinaly use (like electricity, roads, transporation etc.). Without that, there is no solution to the problem.
In one hand we have proposals from Obama and Hillary that extend coverage, effectively putting more money on the hands of the Insurers (which of course has to come from wealthy tax payers). And in the other one we have Mr Suderman et al that advocate for the status quo, which is basically also a lot of money in the pockets of the insures, also paid mostly by wealthy people and by American corporations but that leaves around 45 million people outside the system.
None of the proposals address the real issue here. The status quo is, and Mr Suderman knows it, really damaging in terms of competitivity of American corporations vs international ones. While a company like General Motors expends 6 Billion dollars of corporate money on health care for its employees, other companies like Toyota or Renault, pay basically 0 dollars for the same service (at least on their home turf). Then, the universal flavors of Obama and Hillary, only shift the burden to other taxpayers, but don’t change the status quo much because at the end the insurance companies will pocket *ALL* and *ANY* benefits, because that is their only purpose of existence.
So, where are the real free market proposal for health care ? like actually removing the whole health care industry and letting the actual health care providers compete between themselves ? or something so complicated like, lets say, providing more doctors and health care professionals to actually cover the demand ? or other things like eliminating what amounts to be de facto quotas for MD graduates stablished by AMA and such ?
Those are areas where a little healthy competion can help to lower costs and benefit the end consumer.
February 28th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
Look Sickle, I admire your persistence on the donor issue, but there’s really no way that they’re going to give that info up. Everyone knows that this is a partisan website…that’s why they come here!
Health care “needs” are a lil more complex than supply and demand. A lot of times they involve life or death or at least long-term good health. I don’t mind health care professionals making good money for providing good service, but health care insurance companies are in the game to deny the maximum amount of service for the mimimum amount of cost. This is counter-productive to the public good…to say the least IMO. We are, in this country, on a “baby steps” plan to single-payer health care (like the rest of the Western world has already)…barring any one of the states taking the leap first, which I think is more likely.