Charlie's Prescription for Healthcare Reform

It is within the power of the federal government to offer universal coverage at any time. All it has to do is open the nation's VA hospitals to people without health insurance. They don't have to touch any other program or piss off anyone with this approach. This will be the safety net for the 40+ million uninsured people out there.

I know what you are thinking. This is bullshit. VA hospitals suck. Even veterans find a way not to go there if they can help it. And this points to the fatal logic of the leftards. To oppose this proposal is to admit that the government runs hospitals in a rather shitty way. The true aim is to get all that great healthcare they have in regular hospitals but to get other people to pay for it.

There is no true free market in healthcare in the western world. You can't say it doesn't work because it hasn't been tried. Efforts to bring egalitarianism to healthcare has resulted in universal shittiness as we see in the UK. Meanwhile, rich folks overseas come here to get the good healthcare. So much for equality.

My prescription for healthcare reform is simple:

1. ABOLISH MANDATORY ER TREATMENT.

If you have been gutshot in a drive-by, there isn't a hospital in this land who can refuse you treatment by law even if you can't pay. This is wrong. As tragic as it is, people who get free medical care end up putting their costs on others. The result is a snowball effect as fewer and fewer people are able to afford healthcare as the costs are passed along. This is why healthcare prices are rising.

2. ABOLISH MEDICARE/MEDICAID.

These programs are also horrible because they cost more and more each year while insulating people from the costs of healthcare. Old people especially never turn down a doctor or a procedure. They don't care about the cost which is why hospitals and the like gouge the hell out of the programs.

3. DEREGULATE THE HEALTH INSURANCE INDUSTRY.

This industry bears the brunt of all kinds of regulations which forbid them from offering new products or services or competing across state lines.

4. ABOLISH THE FDA.

The FDA is more trouble than good by approving dangerous drugs that the people think are safe while also keeping helpful drugs off the market. These decisions are best left to the medical establishment. The FDA makes it prohibitively expensive to bring new drugs to market which also drives up costs.

All of these proposals can be supercharged by offering tax deductions on all healthcare expenses.

At this point, all my leftard readers are howling in indignation. How can you propose such draconian measures? How can you turn out the elderly like that? What kind of heartless bastard are you?

All of these emotional questions cut to the fundamental problem in our country as well as abroad. People see healthcare not as a product or a service like a computer or a Big Mac but as a human right. When we see it as a product or a service, we see low cost LASIK eye surgery and affordable plastic surgery. Even racehorses can get an MRI for far less than it costs for a person. This is because we don't see these things as fundamental rights.

On the things we do see as fundamental rights, the costs are tremendous. It doesn't matter if it is here in the US or abroad. Government intrusion into healthcare drives up costs, and the government's only answer is to install price controls and rationing. The result is diminished healthcare. This is why a working guy can buy his wife a new set of tits with cash, but he can't do the same if she gets pregnant. The irony of socialized medicine is that it actually results in inferior and less healthcare.

The fundamental problem in healthcare is that people can't turn off their emotions on this issue. There are two things people can't abide. The first is people going without healthcare because they can't pay. The second is people getting better care because they can pay. But despite their good intentions and policies, socialized medicine results in the very two things that proponents cannot abide.

By divorcing emotion from this issue, we can establish a true free market in healthcare. The result will be lower healthcare costs and better care. Free markets have given us cheap computers, cheap cellphones, DirecTV dishes on every mobile home, etc. Capitalism works. I know it works because my brother got both his eyes done for less than the tuition for a semester at any university here in SC.

But emotion will never leave this issue. People can't be logical or rational on this issue. These are the same people who think nothing of us going to war and killing people. If you get the impression that human thinking has not evolved much beyond the tribalism of ancient times, you would be correct. Tribes cared for their own while not hesitating to go kill off some other tribe.

What happens to the people who can't pay? They do without. It drives you nuts to contemplate it, but we don't have this problem when someone can't afford a cellphone. But I know a lot of poor people, and every damn one of them has a cellphone. In my harsh world, the ER would be as cheap as a cellphone. Because we can't let the market work, we have middle class people who can't afford basic medical care. I know if I didn't have insurance I would be fucked. It shouldn't be this way. We should live in a world where not having health insurance is a minor inconvenience and not a ticket to financial ruin.

I know my prescription will never happen. People are too stupid and emotional to do the smart thing. But there is always the black market, and someone willing to flout the law or maybe convert a cruise ship into a hospital will open a thriving business to cater to the people who can pay. This is already happening in Canada. Freedom will find a way.

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