Liberty Defined: 50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedom (23 page)

I personally identify with the dictionary definition of marriage: “The social institution under which a man and woman establish their decision to live together as husband and wife by legal commitments or religious ceremony.” If others who choose a different definition do not impose their standards on anyone else, they have a First Amendment right to their own definition and access to the courts to arbitrate any civil disputes.

There should essentially be no limits to the voluntary definition of marriage. “Voluntary” should be slightly qualified. Since a child cannot make adult decisions, and though a twelve-year-old may agree to marriage, it can hardly be justified as an uncoerced arrangement. Mental handicap may also be an exception. If any rules need to apply in our system of government, they would fall to the states and not the federal government. The mentally handicapped should be protected and decisions made for them by their guardians and rarely the state. Currently, there are twelve states that recognize common-law marriage. There’s no license required, and it is recognized as a legal entity.

This issue hardly justifies an amendment to the Constitution; passage or even a heated debate only serves to divide us
and achieves nothing. It is typical of how government intervention in social issues serves no useful purpose. With a bit more tolerance and a lot less government involvement in our lives, this needless problem and emotionally charged debate could be easily avoided. The best approach is to make marriage a private matter. Though there may be a traditional dictionary definition of marriage, the First Amendment should include allowing people to use whatever definition they like as long as force and fraud are excluded.

When we no longer believe that civilization is dependent on government expansion, regulating excesses, and a license for everything we do, we will know that civilization and the ideas of liberty are advancing. In economics, licensing is designed by the special interests to suppress competition. Licensing for social reasons reflects the intolerant person’s desire to mold other people’s behavior to their standard. Both depend on the use of illegitimate government force.

T
he prevailing attitude of the American people is that everyone has a right to medical care. This is an intellectual error that will lead us down the path toward destroying what is good in the current system and replacing it with a system that will be terrible for everyone. The supposed right to medical care can only be guaranteed at others’ expense. The transfer can only be arranged by force. This creates oppressive bureaucracies, encourages overutilization of resources, and leads to technological stagnation and inevitably to rationing and deprivation.

It’s true that everyone has a right to
pursue
medical care without being hindered by government policies. But that is not the system we have today. Today’s messed-up medical system is a result of forty years of government interference in the process. Regulations, inflation, tax laws, and federal mandates to provide care through corporate-run HMOs, interference in providing insurance, massive subsidies, and licensing have all played a negative role in the delivery of medical care in the United States.

The zealots now demanding even more government involvement do not realize that those in need and the people who require better care are victims of previous misdirected policies. All the well-intentioned humanitarian programs are of no benefit if they are based on false premises.

Can one imagine what it would be like if, thirty years ago, for national security reasons, the U.S. government took responsibility for guaranteeing that every man, woman, and child had a cell phone, called it a right, and justified it for national defense purposes? It would have been a nightmare. Quality would have never improved, prices would be sky high, and distribution lousy. But we now have affordable cell phones and the prices will continue to drop as more and more competition is encouraged by the market.

It’s only through government interference that a hospital can charge $1,000 for a toothbrush and get paid for it. In the same way, it’s only the Department of Defense that pays $700 for a $5 hammer. It’s the nature of government to produce low-quality products and services at extremely high prices. Socialist, bureaucratic, and interventionist economic systems inevitably injure most of the people who are supposed to be helped, and at a very high cost.

Modern technology has been with us for several decades. It has been a real asset to all industries and has helped to keep prices in check as quality improved. This has been especially true in electronics like cell phones, TVs, and computers. Though medicine has greatly benefited from new technology, the cost of medicine, instead of dropping, has significantly increased.

There’s a reason for this. Managed care and government
interference for the past forty-five years, with huge amounts of government money injected into the system, achieved only higher prices and poorer distribution of all medical services. The system of government-managed care has caused doctors, medical insurance companies, managed care companies, hospitals, and especially patients to be unhappy with the system. Very few are satisfied. Even those with Medicaid or Medicare realize that both programs are bankrupt and are unsustainable under current conditions.

Important in this debate over medical care is a proper understanding of what insurance is and is not (see the section on Insurance for a more in-depth discussion). True insurance measures risk and is an important tool for free markets to function. The current use of the word “insurance” in dealing with government-managed health care has been deliberately substituted for government social welfare schemes. Since the majority of Americans see medical care as a right, the assumption is that “insurance” is a right and thereby qualifies for total government control.

Authentic price competition exists in providing car insurance for all Americans. It’s sold across state borders, and different policies are available. Owners of older cars frequently drop collision insurance, and the amount of coverage varies. Though auto insurance is required by the states, it’s a far cry from required health insurance. Since government has placed so many mandates on the health insurance companies and doesn’t permit market-based pricing in either premiums or service delivery, the services they offer can no longer qualify as insurance.

It’s obvious to me what would happen if similar rules were placed on the purchase of car insurance. Suppose the benevolent planners decided that a car was crucial to hold a job, and so the job provided car insurance, which was, in turn, declared a right. It would then be quite logical to say that that person couldn’t get to work unless the insurance companies paid for all services, gasoline, and all repairs. Older cars that went ten miles to the gallon and needed constant repairs would not be charged more, or it would be claimed the insurance companies were discriminating against a “precondition” and the poor.

Once the “insurance” was provided—with government subsidies—every little problem would be taken care of, whether it was critical or not. It would invite abuse of the system. Excess fuel usage, repairs, and even fraud would prompt a need for thousands of bureaucrats to monitor the whole program, and people would be required to get prior approval. But then again, it is claimed that by rooting out waste and fraud, the government could save enough money to pay for the program and have enough money left over to reduce the national debt. Suddenly, all the problems are miraculously solved!

Obviously, car insurance companies could not survive if they were forced to repair every car that was damaged or nonfunctional prior to the purchase of insurance. How efficient would it be for government-mandated food insurance, including first-dollar purchases, to assure good eating habits to provide good health? It would be argued that it would “save” billions by promoting good health and eliminating obesity. Reasonable people would laugh at such a proposal, and yet that’s parallel to what is being proposed for the medical care system.

Once insurance companies are required by the government to insure against preconditions, it’s no longer insurance—it’s a social welfare mandate and will result in bankrupting the insurance companies, or they will be bailed out by a government subsidy, further bankrupting the government. So far no one has mandated insurance companies sell fire insurance to a person whose house is on fire, or insurance on a beach house once the hurricane is a few miles offshore. Most people understand this, but for some reason they refuse to draw the analogy to medical insurance.

True deregulation of the insurance industry would legalize various options that would appeal to individuals who don’t want to pay for care they do not need. Instead of making all preconditions insurable, adjusting coverage to the wishes of the individuals would drive costs down. Rating smokers and motorcyclists and overweight hypertensives makes economic sense. Why should those who have better health habits pay more to take care of those who don’t?

When buying home insurance the customer picks exactly what he wants covered and fits it to his budgetary needs. This discretion for productive purposes must be allowed in buying medical insurance. The interstate commerce clause was designed to allow all goods and services and people to be able to cross state lines and not be hindered, as current laws have done for the sale of medical insurance.

Mandating first-dollar expenditures to be covered by medical insurance, something that has been going on for years, can’t work. It only raises the cost of insurance. Coverage for office visits and prescription drugs are thought to be wonderful cure-alls, but they aren’t. They have to be paid for by
higher insurance premiums. Medical insurance has turned into a system of prepaid services dictated by government rules, dominated by a convoluted system of HMOs and PPOs, and has its roots in the Nixon administration of the early 1970s.

I entered the medical field when government involvement was low and third-party payments were mostly for hospital care and emergencies, not for first-dollar expenses. For the most part charges were always the minimum. With managed care and the first-dollar payment, the charges are always the maximum because there is no incentive for either the patients or the providers to keep charges down. Third-party payments encourage abuse, which prompts price controls. All price controls lead to shortages. Today, we have high costs, controls, and a lot of unhappy people. More government only means the problems will get worse.

Someone might say that medical insurance can’t be compared to car insurance since medical care is vital, a car isn’t. In fact, the greater the importance of anything, the stronger the reason not to depend on a government redistributionist system. A government system of anything has a nearly perfect record of failure—whether it’s stopping war, preserving liberty, guaranteeing sound money, or generating economic prosperity.

I grant you, the emotional argument for government intrusion in medical care is different from that for car insurance, but the two sectors are operating under the same set of economic laws. Those economic laws give us cheap cell phones, TVs, and computers with constant improvement in quality in every sector that is more or less free of direct government management. That same system could give us quality
health care at decreasing costs. Congress, the President, and the courts may tamper constantly with the laws of the land to favor the special interests. They also try to interfere with the laws of economics, but those laws can’t be repealed, and since that is not understood we all suffer the consequences.

Politicians and their constituents are always trying to circumvent the annoying rules of the market, but that only brings about the opposite of the results they seek. Instead, worse conditions result for the very people they’re trying to provide services for without requiring that they pay for them.

The misunderstanding about the notion of individual rights and insurance contributes significantly to the medical care crisis and the economy in general. Most Americans know there are ongoing economic crises, but some people suffer much more than others. Those who have not been hit hard and those who are quite happy with their medical care whether it’s coming from Medicaid, Medicare, the VA, or active military or private insurance should be concerned as well because government distortion of distribution and costs is ingrained in the system. The system is fragile as is the economy, and a lot more people are going to become unhappy with their current coverage. One main reason is that inflation is alive and well in this country.

Patients’ most common complaint is that medical care costs too much. We hear about this more often than we hear complaints about the quality of care. Mismanagement by government surely does push costs up, as do AMA and government restrictions on competition, and old-fashioned inflation is a major contributor as well.

Inflating the money supply never pushes all prices and
wages up equally. If it did, there would be a lot less complaining about it. Of course, the malinvestment would still be a serious concern. Some prices go up and others can actually drop. Those areas that governments “stimulate” by additional legislation will cause greater inflationary pressures in those areas, such as housing, education, and medical care. The escalating cost of medical care cannot be completely solved unless the source of inflation and excessive government mandates are addressed.

Even with all of these changes, there must still be some attention given to reforming tort law. Defensive medicine is epidemic and is unbelievably expensive. Tort law today benefits most the trial lawyers and only helps injured patients modestly or not at all. Doctors’ additional expenses and pressure to run every test conceivable contribute much to medical care cost increases, especially amplified with third-party payers.