Health insurance is not a right

As the country continues to watch the health-care debate, it’s common to hear liberals talk about the right to “quality, affordable health-care”.  I agree with them on the importance of having health insurance, and the need for affordability. What I disagree with is the mechanisms being proposed for obtaining coverage and making it “affordable”.

With democrats in power, I know it’s fashionable to demonize anyone looking to make a profit. This is especially true of companies who make money selling health insurance. After all, good health insurance could be the difference between life and death. It’s something everyone should have. The problem is that some short-sighted people don’t value it until they need it.

Many people who don’t have health insurance know it’s important and they want it, but they don’t want to pay for it. They might spend money on satellite television, cable, cigarettes, expensive clothes, vacations, dinners out, or other frivolous things. These individuals could certainly restructure their spending, but that wouldn’t be fun. Would you rather spend a few thousand dollars on a trip to Cancun, or some boring insurance policy you might not need?

That’s really one of my big problems with health-care reform. As someone who pays a substantial amount annually, I don’t see why I should pay for someone else’s health-care in addition to my own. Congress has suggested many ways to pay for these subsidies: Taxes on the wealthy, a soda tax, taxing “Cadillac” health plans, and even taxing health benefits. All this for people who make poor decisions or refuse to prioritize their spending.

I also wonder if the more liberal members of Congress listen to themselves when they speak. We hear them talk about how a public option is necessary in order to assure competition. This is true, but they have the details wrong. Liberals want a public option which will offer lower prices than health insurance companies. This will cause consumers to buy insurance through the public option and will eventually bankrupt private companies. Once this happens, guess what we have: A single payer system. Welcome to socialized medicine! I hope you don’t mind waiting two years for your next surgery.

Liberals are correct about the need for competition, but this competition needs to come from private industry, not the government. Companies will not be able to compete with the government, especially if a public option has the ability to receive unlimited subsidies. Many states only have two or three private options for health insurance. If Congress would open up competition by encouraging insurers to sell beyond state lines, the competition problem would likely be solved, and with more competition, we’ll see lower prices.

Speaking of prices, what happened to tort reform? I know Democrats receive lots of campaign contributions from trial lawyers, but if they care about affordable health insurance as much as they claim, shouldn’t they address this issue? Failing to do so seems suspect to me.

Make no mistake, a public option is an under-handed way of steering the country toward socialized medicine. If a public option passes, the question isn’t if, but when a single-payer system will be implemented. This has been there goal all along, and it is getting closer to happening.