By Craig J. Cantoni
By Nov. 8, 2009
Americans can thank the former Republican presidents listed above for the
unconstitutional healthcare contraption that passed the House and that will
complete the transformation of the United States into a European-style
social-welfare state, but without any of the market efficiencies that several
European nations have designed into their national healthcare
systems.
All of these presidents ignored the fatal flaws with the existing
healthcare system and handed the issue to the Democrats. The irony is that Democrats had created the
fatal flaws and would have been easy targets in a Republican-led reform
effort.
The first fatal flaw was wage controls in 1942, which led companies to
compete for labor by substituting medical benefits for wages. Next, employer-provided medical benefits were
excluded from taxable income. Then,
medical benefits were deemed as negotiable wages under labor laws. All of these flaws happened under Democrat
presidents.
The flaws resulted in the biggest flaw of all: the death of a consumer market in medical
care/insurance. In its place grew the
economically unsustainable system of third-party payments, in which employers
and their insurance companies paid doctors and hospitals for care given to their
employees. Employees sat on the
sidelines like brainless coconuts instead of informed consumers as others set
prices and service levels for medical care. Eventually, the coconuts lost all knowledge of the cost of the care they
were receiving, thus creating a mindset that medical care shouldn’t cost them
anything. They also became dependent on
their employer for medical care/insurance, a dependency that would lead to
widespread insecurity as the old employment model of lifetime employment with
one employer fell apart.
Incidentally, the disconnect between cost and use is also the fatal flaw
with public education. Parents have no
idea what the education costs them and thus see no direct connection between
education spending and their wallets. Because of this disconnect, education productivity has plummeted over the
last 40 years, as measured by stagnant test scores and a doubling of per-pupil
spending in real terms. It’s also
interesting to note that the stated goal of compulsory education was universal
education, just as the goal of nationalized healthcare is universal
healthcare. With over 30 percent of
Americans not finishing high school, and with many of those who do finish being
below standard in reading and math, universal education has been a failure. Yet many Americans believe that universal
healthcare will be a success.
The final flaw in healthcare was Medicare, which was enacted in 1965
under -- yep, you got it -- Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat. Unbeknownst to most Americans, Medicare
replaced a cost-effective healthcare system known as Kerr-Mills for the elderly
poor. Quickly becoming an entitlement
for the non-poor, Medicare reinforced the mindset that medical care/insurance
was not a personal responsibility but a responsibility of third parties. Of course the original cost estimates of
Medicare have turned out to be laughably wrong, and of course, the program has
been extended way beyond its original intent, most recently and egregiously by
George W. Bush.
All of the Republican presidents listed in this commentary’s title
professed to be believers in free markets. Yet they failed to understand where the death of a consumer market in
healthcare would lead -- to growing insecurity among Americans, to high numbers
of uninsured, to skyrocketing costs, and ultimately to complete government
control. Failing to understand that,
they failed to act and thereby handed the issue to the Democrats.
Depending on what you think of nationalized healthcare,
you can either blame or thank Republicans for the passage of the healthcare
bill.
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An author, columnist and longstanding activist in
healthcare reform, Mr. Cantoni can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.
