The State of the Union's Health
By Richard E. Ralston
February 1, 2006
In his State of the Union Address to Congress, President Bush devoted a paragraph to health care. While we might agree with the ideas that we must "confront the rising cost of care" or "strengthen the doctor-patient relationship," more could be said about those issues. Costs will not be confronted unless most of us who receive health care participate in the cost, and the "relationship" between doctors and patients will not be strengthened if the entire Federal government is injected into the middle of it.
In his State of the Union Address to Congress, President Bush devoted a paragraph to health care. While we might agree with the ideas that we must "confront the rising cost of care" or "strengthen the doctor-patient relationship," more could be said about those issues. Costs will not be confronted unless most of us who receive health care participate in the cost, and the "relationship" between doctors and patients will not be strengthened if the entire Federal government is injected into the middle of it.
On the other hand, the few words devoted to computerizing medical records were probably too many. Computerization has been happening for decades and will continue to happen. It will not eliminate errors, even if the typing skills of some physicians are better than their handwriting. Anyone who has tried to make sense out of a Medicare statement on an insurance bill knows computerization will not automatically create clarity. Computerization of medical records is not a magic wand to reduce costs, and turning all the records over to the Federal government to guarantee our privacy will not do so.
The President did propose a number of measures to allow individuals to more easily meet their own health care needs. Two sentences were devoted to strengthening Health Savings Accounts (HSAs): to make sure that those saving for their own medical expenses receive the same tax benefits as those who receive tax-free insurance from their employer, and to make coverage portable when employment changes. No explanation of "strengthening" was provided, but if it has any meaning it would include allowing larger annual contributions to HSAs and permitting the use of HSAs to pay Medicare providers for additional health care options after retirement. This would help those involved in the cost of their own health care to manage their resources better—rather than just transferring their expenses to everyone else.
The President's concluding sentence, calling for medical liability reform, is also important. We now have some lawyers telling unqualified juries to "send a message" to physicians and drug companies with their verdict. The preferred "message" is to award those lawyers through their clients with billions of dollars in arbitrary and excessive punitive damages. That drives up the cost and reduces the availability of health care for everyone.
Thus endeth the paragraph. An unfortunate omission was any mention of the need to eliminate taxation on all health insurance and health expenses for every American. If the government cannot afford a modest reduction in taxes for those who struggle to pay their own health care bills, it certainly cannot afford to pay for all of those bills, as well as for the health care of those who now cannot or do not pay anything.
But the greatest omission in the President's address was any discussion of the proper role of government in health care, and the principles upon which health care policy should be based. Freedom and the individual rights of both patients and health care providers are the only proper basis for health care policy. President Bush has previously talked about an "ownership society." If we do not own our own bodies we cannot own anything. Senator Edward Kennedy, on the same day as the State of the Union address, proposed the elimination of all private insurance in order to force citizens of all ages into the Medicare system. This demonstrates the tendency of a government that pays for all of our health care to inevitably decide that it owns our bodies and should control what we do with them.
The President provided no clear moral or political foundation that would protect us from this threat to individual rights. That creates a void—which advocates of government-provided health care will quickly move to fill. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" should not end where medicine begins. Freedom and personal choice are as vital or even more vital for health care as for other aspects of our lives.
Richard E. Ralston is Executive Director of Americans for Free Choice in Medicine.
Copyright © 2006 Americans for Free Choice in Medicine. All rights reserved.
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