Today marks the second annual Universal Health Care Lobby Day,
an event organized by members of the American Medical Student
Association (AMSA) at colleges across the state.
More than 300 premed students are taking leave from memorizing
the steps of glycolysis to travel to Sacramento to advocate
universal health care.
These students, though, are proposing a policy that is
unequivocally against their own interests, a policy that will
cripple the state’s health care system.
Their case rests on studies that inflate the number of uninsured
who cannot afford health insurance.
Universal health care is a system that would deprive the
population of choice by assigning a single bureaucratically imposed
solution to a diverse population with complex problems.
It negates the entire concept of personal responsibility ““
particularly in cases where people can afford health insurance and
choose not to ““ and removes a very large incentive for
productivity.
In short, universal health care is absolutely un-American.
There are currently four plans for universal health care being
discussed by the state Legislature, including a bill proposed by
Gov. Schwarzenegger that would require that all Californians be
insured at the expense of employers, doctors and those being
insured.
Another plan, the single-payer system, abolishes the private
insurance industry and establishes the government as the financier
of all health care.
The single-payer system is the plan that AMSA strongly endorses.
This system, though not necessarily socialized health care, is
likely to devolve into socialized health care.
As the government controls all health care funds, it is likely
to use its monopoly power to take on greater control in order to
keep costs down, limiting availability of services and dictating
salaries to doctors.
This control, known as bulk negotiation, is touted as a benefit
by supporters. It would certainly squeeze the profits of
pharmaceutical companies and health care providers. But, while this
may provide benefits in the short run, this strategy will serve to
destroy innovation in the long run by removing the profit
incentive.
The financing and control over the provision of government
health care would undoubtedly fall to a bureaucracy. Anyone
who’s been to the DMV can imagine how disastrous such a
health care scheme would be.
The right to health care in socialized countries is often
meaningless when it comes to receiving the care; about a million
Brits are waiting to get into hospitals at any given time,
according to the British government.
Similarly, Canadians in need of surgery wait an average of 17.9
weeks for their procedures ““ a number that would be even
higher if many Canadians did not receive health care in the U.S. at
the expense of the Canadian government.
And these are countries touted by supporters of universal health
care as examples of the system’s success.
One of the main arguments for universal health care is that the
U.S. spends more on health care than socialized countries. But many
of these countries shave cost by denying care, suggesting that the
extra expenditure by the U.S. is hardly frivolous.
The main impetus for universal health care in the U.S., say its
proponents, is based on studies showing that 15 percent of the
population is uninsured. However, a quarter of these are only
uninsured for a period of less than a year.
And the vast majority of Americans would not be persuaded to
finance the health care of those who have the means to purchase
health insurance but choose not to purchase it.
According to the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured
study presented to the Senate in support of a single-payer system,
only 7 percent of the uninsured deliberately choose not to purchase
health care. How do the studies come up with these figures for the
uninsured? They ask them.
The study asserts that many of the uninsured cannot afford
insurance because 64 percent of them earn just less than twice the
federal poverty level.
The study puts the average family cost of health insurance
out-of-pocket at $9,000 a year and claims that these premiums are
unaffordable.
With 64 percent of the uninsured having yearly incomes of
$30,000, the cost of insurance would amount to 30 percent of their
income. This may be a large share of total expense, but is not
necessarily unaffordable.
These studies ignore any element of personal responsibility by
claiming that health insurance is unaffordable for this segment of
the uninsured based only on a self-reported inability to pay.
Most Americans would reject such a system if they were aware of
the methods used to estimate that health care was unaffordable.
Just one-third of the 15 percent of the American population that
is uninsured have incomes below the federal poverty level, and
slightly more than half of that segment have jobs.
Excluding illegal immigrants, this share drops by an additional
fifth. Thus, working American citizens who are clearly unable to
afford insurance make up just 2 percent of the population.
But for most Americans, the health care system is working.
In a recent ABC News survey, 89 percent of Americans reported
being satisfied with the quality of their health care. Proponents
of universal health care are really asking the vast majority of the
population that is insured to jeopardize their top-notch health
care for a relatively small sliver of the population.
If proponents of universal health care succeed at misleading the
population about the true unaffordability of health care, you might
want to start preparing; if you foresee yourself needing medical
procedures in the near future, I suggest you start waiting in
line.
If you’re an ex-premed like Lazar, send your reasons
for quitting to dlazar@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments
to
viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.