Ethicalego Opinion

Presidential candidates health plans are flawed.

Senator Clinton admits that her proposed health plan will force people to buy health insurance and the government will take money from their wages to pay for it. Government officials will decide how much those wage earners can afford to pay.  

Senator Obama says that he rejects garnishing paychecks to pay for health insurance.  However, his plan forces employers to provide a quality health plan for employees or pay a percentage of their payroll into the national health plan. Clinton’s plan includes similar terms. Employers will do the garnishing when they reduce employees’ raises and limit new hires to compensate for this expense.

Clinton and Obama’s proposed health plans are essentially the same. Both of them claim their plans help pay for themselves by streamlining the health care system to make it more efficient, less expensive and therefore more affordable for consumers.

Both plans guarantee to make health insurance and health care available at costs that will not exceed a certain percentage of family income no matter family members’ health conditions.   Both use tax money to make their plan work, by direct subsidies to employers and for government payments for poor people’s health insurance policies.   

A scary part in both plans is their use of compulsory preventive health care measures to reduce health costs. The plans require insurance companies to provide preventive services that experts agree are proven and effective. In addition, they call for consumers to embrace those preventive practices to avoid health problems. Those terms erode individuals control over their health care and place it under the authority of government and health experts. Expect more shifts of authority each year.

Nobody disputes the wisdom of people eating and living right and adopting proven preventive health measures. However, they should question the wisdom of giving the government the power to force individuals to live a certain way health wise. Government will expand its authority to do this by claiming the preventive acts save medical costs. It will be difficult to reverse those mandated procedures even when evidence shows them ineffective or harmful.  

An incident in an east coast school district shows the danger of government control over private health decisions. Some parents refused to immunize their children because of safety concerns. So, school officials refused to enroll students without influenza shots. They claimed unimmunized students still posed a risk to the other students who had their shots, because the shots did not offer complete protection.

This answer supported the parents’ concern about putting their children’s health at risk with flu shots that may have unknown side effects. Nevertheless, government authorities threatened to prosecute them if they did not immunize their child by a certain date. The parents complied. I read a medical report some months later that reported potential serious side effects from those shots for some children.

Some employers already enforce employment requirements that dictate employees’ conduct away from work. They claim employees’ conduct at home affects health insurance premiums the employer pays. 

Both plans have a major flaw that is common in most proposed health care plans. They try to transform a health care system based on profit making principles into a capitalism-socialism crossbreed.   Health care providers, drug companies and insurance companies continue taking their profits. However, their consumers lose their power to choose a health insurance product or to reject them all

Both plans include many good provisions. A problem is that they continue the presumption that employers and government are responsible for wage earners’ health and retirement benefits. This is a dehumanizing idea that treats American wage earners more like slaves and serfs than citizens in a free society.

Instead, government and society should require employers to pay workers wages high enough for them to pay their health insurance costs. Then, consumers should set up nonprofits health insurance corporations owned by policyholders that offer health benefits similar to the best parts of the Clinton and Obama plans. Policyholders could enforce preventive health practices among members free of government compulsion. Government subsidy for the poor and unemployed would go into health care and not stockholders’ pockets as profits.

A secondary benefit of forcing employers to pay a living wage or shut down is that their customers would pay the full costs of the product they buy. Currently, some employers sell their products cheaper by foisting their labor cost onto taxpayers and hospitals when their employees use emergency room visits for their health care plan.

Clinton and Obama’s plans expand this abuse by promising direct subsidy to employers for their employees’ health insurance costs. This makes taxpayers a socialist collective for employers’ expenses without sharing in the profits.

Contact Kenneth Brooks  at P.O. B 882, Vallejo, CA 94590. opinion@ethicalego.com