Fix Health Care - Visit Mom

It seems the health care conflict is heating up... congressmen are cancelling town hall meetings for fear of the pitchforks. The arguments are intense and the news is showing the conflicts, no doubt encouraging more conflicts. The conflicts are over the false dilemma over more government intrusion versus less government intrusion.

The solution to the health care crisis is complete deregulation; indeed, with deregulation there would be an economic recovery that would lead the world as USA puts its creativity behind alleviating pain and suffering.

With medicine in USA now, we have such massive featherbedding in both health care and insurance that we guarantee a false dilemma fight.

Since insurance companies accepted regulation, they merely amortize risk and complain when government policies change the premises, such as extending health care to domestic partners. With such a change the insurance companies have to start over, and since they don't know really what the cost for amortization is, they jack up the price high. Any extra revenue that flows i, they spend to maintain their traditional profit margins. Ooops! What to do more money coming in after mispricing premiums? Private jet travel at the VP level!

In a free market insurance companies make money by lowering risk; when they find less claims through better medicine, they earn more and cut premiums to stay competitive. In a free market prices drift down.

Subsidized corn, sodium and lard are reworked into about their worst combination and fed too people on welfare, who then end up ill and on medical welfare. Ross Perot became a billionaire computerising the welfare state, and FritoLay became huge feeding those on welfare. (As did the people eating Frito's)

For most people, most health care expense comes at the first few days and the last few days of life. For 89 year old who dies of pneumonia, or the 19 year old who dies of motorcycle wreck injuries, it is that intensive care that costs.

One change in our society is we began farming out assisting our elders as they aged. By concentrating elders in group settings, we can farm out care to poor people to attend to our elders, and be free of the responsibility. This is of course a distortion of division of labor, since there is nothing anyone can do that is more important than taking care of one's elders.

Of course, when we see what it takes to care for elders in such concentrations, we are convinced we could not do it ourselves. But again, that is just what they spend, not what it costs. Another factor: elders live better longer in multigenerational settings. Concentrate them, there are more problems, more costs.

But what if you are a single mother working and mom has alzheimers and you cannot leave her alone all day. Single mothers used to be rare, we were once neighborhood rich, and neighborly. If all else failed there was charity. By passing responsibility for health care and so much more onto others, we have deprived ourselves of much richness in our lives.

If we took responsibility for our elders, we would certainly have to re-arrange our lives, and work at a higher level of responsibility. But then we are flexible, we humans, we so often rise to the occasion.

A big part of medicare expense is mom using "free" care to get attention. Doctors nurses, drugs all charge a lot of money, especially because they spend a lot, not that they cost a lot. Insurance companies simply move the money around according to the amortization tables. With health care costs so high, something must give. Washington State just past an "physician-assisted suicide" which of course introduces violence to address the problem. This is a downward spiral.

We can deregulate the field of medicine and see similar job-generating, wealth expanding innovations when we saw deregulated telecommunications. Probably not, because telecommunications was a small slice of the USA economy. health care is bloated. Probably the best thing you can do, the least thing you can do, is visit mom. Invite her to move in. Make it so she can move in if need be.

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