Op Ed:
Perverted Politics
Killed Previous U.S.
Universal Healthcare

Moral-Hazard Myth Reverses Common Sense and Economics

The U.S. healthcare system is way off the track. Photo: amelianow.com

(SALEM) - American history tells some woeful tales about political perversion forcing portentous decision, with damning consequence.

But our healthcare market-based debacle is setting new records in costs, consequences, and pending catastrophe.

Its most painful impacts are on the least-able to pay and our once-vauntedly “comfortable” middle-class of white-collar workers.

The situation presents a clear, clean, consummate proof of what can only be accomplished wisely-and-well by government --as highly visible in 27 other industrialized nations already.

The most painful part of this disintegrating healthcare pattern comes from “the moral-hazard myth”. “Moral hazard” is the term economists use to describe changes insurance can create in the behavior of those-insured.

Its impact, perverted or simply over-promoted, has long shaped much of what has gone-wrong with market-based healthcare.

There is no possible question that “the invisible hand” here has been carefully guided and manipulated by contrivance and collusions, for private gain, by long-continued plan and shared plunder.

That myth perpetuates the precarious claim that “less government is always better”, long questionable and here-demonstrated by deplorable degradation of our whole “middle-class” and those many others still below that comfortable economic level.

It is this same distorted myth that now forces personal responsibility for medical payment, even where realistic circumstance prevents any possibility that can really occur.

That creates the chaos of “demand for dollars” from those whose inescapable circumstance denies them that option.

So they must “choose”: NOT to participate, NOT to seek preventive-care; NOT to take medicines denied by dollar-lack. Sometimes, even between food, rent, and medication.

But desperate circumstance then forces them, willy-nilly, into Emergency Room care at hospitals already overwhelmed.

SO we-as-society end up paying particularly heavy costs brought on by delay, denial, destructive consequence, consummated in costliest care-center/possible; often too late, leading to further distinctly-deadly costs casually shuffled onto any-possible payment-source.

These inescapable economic and social realities prove our problem is “HOW-to-do”, rather than “WHO-does”; with WHAT and WHY now demanding rapid, radical change, since the current pattern provides more chaos than coverage --at rapidly-escalating costs.

This “moral-hazard” myth denies proven “social insurance” plans, sharing risks across the entire group; and now requires painful shift to “actuarial insurance”. As for car-coverage: “YOU must pay for what you get” -- or do-without; regardless consequence and added costs.

“Actuarial”-emphasis shifts costs heavily to individuals from employers, creating consternation when coupled with escalating job-losses or downgrade/impact slashing or removing take-home pay. (See: “The Moral-Hazard Myth”, The NEW YORKER Aug. 29 ‘05)

The historic accident of early union-struggle here --for members/only benefits vs the European development as citizen-right-- forced us into this involuntary pattern.

Now it has become extremely vulnerable to broad-and-rapid economic changes in the world economy. U.S. business finds itself forced into noncompetitive stance via heavy healthcare costs; GM pays $1,500 for every car produced.

We are the ONLY industrialized nation still without direct “single-payer healthcare” --provided to every citizen as a universal right --of some 28 world-recognized.

The obvious “will of the people” here, ever since before the Depression, has been for a “single-payer citizen’s-right” pattern; via the well-established “social insurance” concept, to share risks across the whole group.

Political pressures from dollar-driven corporate management, built on long- disproven 19th Century social theory, has prevented national action reflecting “the people’s will”.

That pat-situation guaranteed corporate control in continued struggles with unions, providing power over white-collar workers as well --with our middle/class economy hanging on the results. (See: “Inequality and Health Care”, WPost pg.A20, 12/13/06)

But now the momentum of truly tremendous economic and social change is forcing us into the 21st Century for stronger healthcare simply to protect and guarantee worker availability and effectiveness.

In Oregon, for the first time in decades, there is strong consensus among groups at odds in past years.

This strengthening movement now includes the Senate’s Commission on Health Care Access and Affordability, whose strong and rational report has just been filed; the Oregon Business Council, whose long-studied report is due within weeks, in time for the new Legislature; former Gov. Kitzhaber’s rational effort, leading his Archimedes Project to become nationally-recognized for its possible-pattern; and the just-delivered Congressional action demanded in his new brilliantly-balanced bill, by Senator Ron Wyden. (See: Ongoing reports in The OREGONIAN and Salem-News)

So radical healthcare change is now driven by the same overwhelming worldwide economic and social forces that are reshaping our business, industry, and social organization; and is demanding cooperative attention from far broader, stronger sources than ever achieved previously.

Social Security with Medicare is highly successful as one form of “social insurance”: Younger participants contribute for older ones pension-style benefits, knowing “their time will come” for their own security.

Together these two effective government programs set the basic “social insurance” pattern for successful operation; with participants reporting satisfaction far above levels found in private-party/for-profit healthcare programs.

That’s reality --in this, still the only one of twenty-eight industrialized nations without its comprehensive “citizen-right single-payer” sensible situation --despite continued effort over the past 50 years.

We’re still fighting unavoidable consequences inevitable in this complex contrivance built for mainly selfish reasons; clearly via political perversion; on the selfish pattern most efficient for private dollar-profits.

“With hospital profits at a six year high, pharmaceutical companies drowning in dollars from the new Medicare drug plans and more and more Oregonians losing health insurance coverage-- something has got to change,” declares Maribet Healey. He directs Oregonians for Health Security, supporting the Kitzhaber project.

Meanwhile other nations enjoy huge savings via governance control, supervision and standards; overwhelmingly superior to that “invisible hand” impact of the so-called “free market” from which we suffer so broadly; now demonstrated as manipulated and mean-minded across our entire nation; in both business and social institutions directly impacted by steeply-ascending healthcare costs and their consequences.