HILLARY CLINTON
palatable progressivism
Hillary Clinton is not nearly as bad as Republicans make her out to be. It is difficult to comprehend why she scares so many people to the extent that she does. Personally, I do not foresee any great catastrophe in the future of the Union should be in fact be selected as our first woman president. Her aims are worthy: bring swift resolution to the Iraq War, renew prosperity among working peoples, expanding health care, developing alternative energy sources, etc. But her preferred methods perfectly illustrate the ugly transformation undergone by the Democratic Party over the last century. "Liberal" is now synonymous with Big Government. Her platform isn't 'Liberal,' in the traditional sense, it is patent Progressivism, with a dash of Populism. She exemplifies the growing tendency to see the federal government as the cure-all remedy for any perceived social ill.
Health care is clearly the central focus of her campaign. Granted, expanded health care is hardly a controversial issue-- all of society benefits when people are healthy. But Ms. Clinton is expecting a free lunch with her universal health care plan. The problem with health care is not who is paying, but how much they're paying. Ms. Clinton's plan immediately changes who pays the cost of health care (government and employers), but it does not reduce the total cost of health care. Like Obama's easy answer to Social Security, this is simply a redistributive effort, and the costs will ultimately find their way back to the general public.
It shouldn't require a Ph.D. in Applied Economics to see that if the government buys everyone's health care, they'll have to raise tax revenue. Whether you pay for care in premiums or you pay in taxes-- you still have to pay. Even if we shift more of the burden onto employers, the costs again will eventually shift back to employees. What this would do, in practice, is increase the cost of employing someone. We wouldn't expect employers to actually cut salaries, but you can bet that they may switch to more capital-intensive ventures (since, after all, maintenance repair is cheaper than providing health care to a family of four), and hire less labor in the future. Many will likely outsource to countries without requisite health care demands. Even those who do not lose jobs will still foot the bill; for example, if an employee would have otherwise received a 10% raise, an employer would almost certainly consider the increased health care costs and instead offer a 5% raise.
Ms. Clinton insists that "preventative care" is the magic bullet to reduce health care costs. But Jay Bhattacharya, who is both an economist and a doctor at Stanford, told the New York Times that preventing one new case of diabetes would require treating five people through anti-obesity programs. Even proponents of universal health care admit that preventative care doesn't equate to affordable care. Jonathan Gruber is the economics professor at MIT who designed Massachusetts universal health care plan. In the same Times article, Gruber said “It’s a nice thing to think," that preventative care will reduce costs, "and it seems like it should be true, but I don’t know of any evidence that preventive care actually saves money.”
Ms. Clinton overlooks simple supply and demand. If we make health care basically free to everyone, then demand increases-- just as decreasing the price of gas will cause people to consume more gas. Even if we decrease total cost per visit, increasing the number of visits will offset any of those savings (and then some).
Don't get me wrong-- this is not an argument in favor of the status quo. Health care has problems, but I believe we've misidentified exactly what the real problem is. The problem is not a failure of the free market, but a natural result of government intervention. The reality is that the current market for private health care is anything but free; Congress has set up the system to decrease competition and thus raise prices. It is impossible to imagine any market scenario where increased competition helped corporations and hurt consumers.
Just to name a few examples of bad policy, regulations forbid catastrophic coverage and pile on unnecessary and expensive requirements; they prohibit competition from out of state insurance companies; they require those who struggle to afford basic coverage to pay income taxes and payroll taxes on the funds they divert to medical spending. The administrative costs of complying with regulations is astonishing: the code of statutes governing Medicare is over 130,000 pages long (no wonder that Medicare cost a total of $718 billion in 2002, almost $2,500 per taxpayer). We blame insurance companies and HMOs, but we forget that HMOs arose not from mandate demand but from government mandate-- the HMO Act of 1973.
While it is true that too many medical decisions are being made by insurance companies. But it is hardly an improvement if we let Congress make those decisions instead. The problem is government intervention, and yet somehow the solution is more government intervention. After all, the Post Office and the DMV are such perfect models of efficiency, why not let the State run our hospitals, too?
Hillary Clinton is not nearly as bad as Republicans make her out to be. It is difficult to comprehend why she scares so many people to the extent that she does. Personally, I do not foresee any great catastrophe in the future of the Union should be in fact be selected as our first woman president. Her aims are worthy: bring swift resolution to the Iraq War, renew prosperity among working peoples, expanding health care, developing alternative energy sources, etc. But her preferred methods perfectly illustrate the ugly transformation undergone by the Democratic Party over the last century. "Liberal" is now synonymous with Big Government. Her platform isn't 'Liberal,' in the traditional sense, it is patent Progressivism, with a dash of Populism. She exemplifies the growing tendency to see the federal government as the cure-all remedy for any perceived social ill.
Health care is clearly the central focus of her campaign. Granted, expanded health care is hardly a controversial issue-- all of society benefits when people are healthy. But Ms. Clinton is expecting a free lunch with her universal health care plan. The problem with health care is not who is paying, but how much they're paying. Ms. Clinton's plan immediately changes who pays the cost of health care (government and employers), but it does not reduce the total cost of health care. Like Obama's easy answer to Social Security, this is simply a redistributive effort, and the costs will ultimately find their way back to the general public.
It shouldn't require a Ph.D. in Applied Economics to see that if the government buys everyone's health care, they'll have to raise tax revenue. Whether you pay for care in premiums or you pay in taxes-- you still have to pay. Even if we shift more of the burden onto employers, the costs again will eventually shift back to employees. What this would do, in practice, is increase the cost of employing someone. We wouldn't expect employers to actually cut salaries, but you can bet that they may switch to more capital-intensive ventures (since, after all, maintenance repair is cheaper than providing health care to a family of four), and hire less labor in the future. Many will likely outsource to countries without requisite health care demands. Even those who do not lose jobs will still foot the bill; for example, if an employee would have otherwise received a 10% raise, an employer would almost certainly consider the increased health care costs and instead offer a 5% raise.
Ms. Clinton insists that "preventative care" is the magic bullet to reduce health care costs. But Jay Bhattacharya, who is both an economist and a doctor at Stanford, told the New York Times that preventing one new case of diabetes would require treating five people through anti-obesity programs. Even proponents of universal health care admit that preventative care doesn't equate to affordable care. Jonathan Gruber is the economics professor at MIT who designed Massachusetts universal health care plan. In the same Times article, Gruber said “It’s a nice thing to think," that preventative care will reduce costs, "and it seems like it should be true, but I don’t know of any evidence that preventive care actually saves money.”
Ms. Clinton overlooks simple supply and demand. If we make health care basically free to everyone, then demand increases-- just as decreasing the price of gas will cause people to consume more gas. Even if we decrease total cost per visit, increasing the number of visits will offset any of those savings (and then some).
Don't get me wrong-- this is not an argument in favor of the status quo. Health care has problems, but I believe we've misidentified exactly what the real problem is. The problem is not a failure of the free market, but a natural result of government intervention. The reality is that the current market for private health care is anything but free; Congress has set up the system to decrease competition and thus raise prices. It is impossible to imagine any market scenario where increased competition helped corporations and hurt consumers.
Just to name a few examples of bad policy, regulations forbid catastrophic coverage and pile on unnecessary and expensive requirements; they prohibit competition from out of state insurance companies; they require those who struggle to afford basic coverage to pay income taxes and payroll taxes on the funds they divert to medical spending. The administrative costs of complying with regulations is astonishing: the code of statutes governing Medicare is over 130,000 pages long (no wonder that Medicare cost a total of $718 billion in 2002, almost $2,500 per taxpayer). We blame insurance companies and HMOs, but we forget that HMOs arose not from mandate demand but from government mandate-- the HMO Act of 1973.
While it is true that too many medical decisions are being made by insurance companies. But it is hardly an improvement if we let Congress make those decisions instead. The problem is government intervention, and yet somehow the solution is more government intervention. After all, the Post Office and the DMV are such perfect models of efficiency, why not let the State run our hospitals, too?
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