…then you’ll love George Will’s insight on what to do about the health care crisis in today’s Washington Post!
Honestly, it’s amazing to me how these folks think sometimes. What does Will propose? Why, blind faith in the market’s invisible hand, of course.
Apparently, it looks to Will like distributing health care to everyone is just too darn hard. So let’s just not try – and then – ta-da! – we’ll “ration” health care only to those who are able to pay for it. Just like we already do right now – except, instead of calling health care costs outrageous, insidious and murderous, we’ll call these costs “rational,” Because, according to Will, “[P]rices produce a rational allocation of scarce resources.”
Good call! Prices are just so … rational? Just ask the 62 percent of people who file for bankruptcy because of medical bills. Given the simple, market-based “free choice” question, “Your money or your life?” all of them gave the correct answer. Until they ran out of money.
If this situation seems untenable to you, well, too bad, says Will:
Regarding reform, conservatives are accused of being a party of “no.” Fine. That is an indispensable word in politics because most new ideas are false and mischievous.
False and Mischievous, eh? The New York Times editorial page sheds some light on false and mischievous goings on in the health insurance industry today. Here’s an insightful tidbit:
A House oversight subcommittee took a close look at a particularly shameful practice known as “rescission,” in which insurance companies cancel coverage for some sick policyholders rather than pay an expensive claim. The companies contend that rescissions are rare. But Congressional investigators found that three big insurers canceled about 20,000 individual policies over a five-year period — allowing them to avoid paying more than $300 million in medical claims.
You see, booting people off of health insurance because they are sick is rational rationing – rational, because it’s profitable. Just like George Will thinks!
As the editorial shows, the health insurance industry is part of the problem, not part of the solution. I’m not a doctor, but I’m sure that trying to reach a political consensus with a disease isn’t the best way to cure it. Reformers should follow the same line of thought while trying to fix health care, and they’ll realize that a single-payer plan is the best option for our nation’s health.
Mike
Exactly.
Things have value because of the market, which determines value. However, one should not be so crass as to think this means that it’s all about money, profit or social-class. Rather, one must have faith in the “Logic of the Economy” which allows us to come to decisions that are “Rational” and also “Good.”
(As such, the end is not profitability qua profitability, which us less enlightened may believe. But, the truly enlightened understand that “profit” is a sign of the Good. Those reaping the large profits are actually reaping goodness.)
It is in fact only when average humans presume to think that they can interfere with the divine logic and think ourselves equal to the Enlightened ones that the Good is not achieved. (This is the problem of having a government when the government sees its purpose as being anything other than to protect the freedom of the “opulent minority,” in Madison’s understood it, meaning those who understand the Market. Government must protect those who can see what is “rational” even when the rest of us see it as irrational.)
This is then reminiscent of Socrates’ problem, of seeking to “know” the Good. But Socrates was able to show others that they could not grasp the nature of the Right and Good, either. People had discover capitalism yet, but Socrates did understand that one should not presume to know so much as the gods.
Things shall be what they will be and they will be “Good” and “Rational” because it is tautological if the market says it’s so… then it’s so.
Just think: if people are sickly… isn’t that a sign from a higher power? Isn’t the Market trying to tell us something? If so, then we’re only lucky that we have someone like George Will who can read such signs.
But like all great prophets, George Will is faced with flak and misunderstanding from the bewildered herd.
June 30, 2009 at 10:28 am
Mike
“in Madison’s understood it” makes no sense. I meant to say: “as Madison” and not “in Madison’s.”
But like I said, I’m not one of the Enlightened ones… I make mistakes.
June 30, 2009 at 10:30 am