The Patriot Post® · Returning to Normal, Part 3

By Larry Craig

When all this is over, there will be a lot of people — or, should I say, a lot of people who have a public audience — who will be clamoring for major changes to our medical care/health insurance system.

The most common change they will want is guaranteed medical coverage with a government-run insurance plan, like Medicare is now for seniors.  What could possibly go wrong with that?

As noted in a previous article, private businesses have an incentive to keep costs down. Government does not. Our government is so far in debt that is has given up even trying to pay it down. It just pays the interest on the debt, and it borrows money to do that. Who does that? You wouldn’t do that, but that’s how your tax dollars are spent — and yet some people want to expand our government by having it do more of the same.

And, of course, when government expands, everything costs more, because paying interest is like burning your money, and the value of your money decreases almost in proportion to that debt due to government-induced inflation.

But at least everybody is covered.

That sounds noble and caring, but it destroys personal incentive and responsibility. A while back, I was thinking about Bernie Sanders and his plan for free college. Hey, I don’t have to pay for it. Somebody else will. So I don’t have to work at all.

That’s what will happen nationwide. I don’t need to worry about getting a better job, working harder, or going back to school — the government will take care of that for me. And when I say government, I mean other people.

But if everybody has the mentality that other people will pay for their own individual lifestyle, then who will do the work that pays for it? You can’t keep taxing the rich, because they’re the ones who work 80 hours a week to start a business, run the business, and invest money for a new project. After a point, they will say it’s just not worth it.

I’ve seen it at work. There, people didn’t want to work overtime because they said the government takes all their money. We have a doctor shortage in our country now. Why? I can’t speak for everyone, but if you want people to spend that kind of time and money to go to school and then work those kinds of hours when they get out, they need to be allowed to make all the money they can. But when the government runs our health-insurance system, that doesn’t happen, and doctors don’t think it’s worth it anymore.

Are there risks with private insurance? Of course. Life has risks. But some people want to remove all the risks in life and have the government make it all nice.

It’s the risks that cause us to go back to school, to work more hours, to try harder, to keep looking for work. Starting a business is risky.

There are basically two kinds of private medical insurance: individual and group.

The best private insurance plans are group plans. Individual plans are more expensive, though under ObamaCare, a lot of people get subsidized insurance coverage. Which means other people pay for it. Individual plans — actually all plans — cost more, because the government told the insurance companies to cover a lot of things they didn’t cover before. But group plans will still give better coverage at a lower cost. But let the company and the customer decide what they want covered. That will lower the costs substantially.

Group plans are essentially employer-based plans. Some people don’t like that, because people lose their plans if they lose their jobs. As it is now, they can keep that plan for about six months after they lose their jobs, if they pay the premium themselves, which most people can’t do. They didn’t realize how much the company was paying for it on their behalf.

I suggest that former employees of a company be allowed to keep their group policy. Forever if need be. What the insurance companies would have to do is to offer scaled-down plans in addition to the company plan. Policyholders would be able to switch plans as their ability to pay improved or worsened. Being part of a group would still give them better rates than if they had to buy it on their own.

But aren’t there be people who might still fall through the cracks?

Our country used to run on the old-fashioned idea of people helping people. Our country didn’t always have government programs to rescue people. This used to be done locally with hundreds of organizations funded with voluntary contributions and usually volunteers — people helping people.

Most of this was religion based, and our politicians chose to use government instead. I’m just saying the cost of doing that outweighs the benefits. Enormously.

Please visit my blog at poligion1.blogspot.com for articles I have written on politics, culture, and public life.