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IPFS News Link • Healthcare

Is Health Care a Right or a Good?

• https://www.lewrockwell.com

The political fiasco that unfolded last week as President Donald Trump and the Republican House leadership failed to pass legislation repealing the Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare, is attributable as much to the failure of politics as it is to the failure of politicians to understand the constitutional role of the federal government.

Republicans could not muster a majority in the House, which they control because a determined small group of them want to remove the federal government from the regulation of health care and believe that the replacement for Obamacare that House leaders have offered would keep too much of it in place. The president and his allies have argued that their bill would invalidate enough of Obamacare to return free choices to health care and to fulfill their campaign promises. Neither side has prevailed.

Here is the back story

When Congress passed Obamacare in 2010, it did so without a single Republican vote. The premise underlying the highly partisan 2,700-page legislation is that health care is a right belonging to everyone in America and the federal government has a constitutional duty to provide it. 

The political structure of Obamacare mandates that every person in America obtain health insurance, that every employer of more than 50 people in America pay for the health insurance of all employees who work more than 30 hours per week, that every policy of health insurance cover a large dimension of potential medical needs and that those earning under a certain annual income level receive health care at the expense of the rest of us. The failure to obtain and maintain health insurance triggers a tax burden — equivalent to the annual premium on a health insurance policy — for every year one goes without coverage.

The economic structure of Obamacare requires 100 percent participation of everyone in America so as to ensure a large pool of insurance premiums — whether paid by individuals, employers or taxpayers — from which to pay health care providers. Still, premiums don't cover costs, which is why President Trump says Obamacare is collapsing.

The regulatory structure of Obamacare orders every primary care physician to keep all medical records on personal computers, to which the Department of Health and Human Services has access. Thus, the long-revered and uniquely American value of the patient-physician privilege — the certain knowledge that your doctor will not reveal what you tell her or him — has been obliterated. The statute also has given the secretary of HHS unreviewable powers to regulate intricacies of the delivery of health care in America.

Along with this expensive and bitter medicine — which has caused hundreds of thousands of folks to downgrade to part-time work, reduced the wages of millions more and driven thousands of health care providers into retirement or new occupations –, Obamacare also has provided some sugar. The statute orders insurance carriers to cover pre-existing conditions, children on their parents' policies up to the age of 26 and expensive elective procedures, such as abortions and sex reassignment.  


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