Does the First Amendment Mean What It Says?

The first amendment to the United States Constitution reads as follows:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; of the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

I was considering the arguments about separation of church and state the other day and thought it might be helpful to review what the first amendment actually said. I know this may seem a little simplistic but the amendment specifically prohibits Congress from passing a law establishing an official religion for the country or a law that prevents people from practicing their religion preference. The amendment specifically does not mention the executive or judicial branches, or anyone else, for that matter. Of course, one must remember that the founders would not recognize the current federal government. The original theory was that the Congress would basically run the country in times of peace but the President had large powers for emergency situations and war because the Congress worked too deliberately in a crisis situation. George Washington felt he would only veto a bill if he believed that the law violated the Constitution. Today, Congress sits on its hands and even is currently trying to pass laws ceding power to the executive branch. I find that pretty interesting since when George W. Bush was President, there was much gnashing of teeth about too much executive power from Democrats but with Barrack Obama as President, Democrats are giving unilateral power to the Treasury Department, for example.

The founding fathers were acutely aware of the history of Europe and the Middle East where untold millions had died as a result of religious wars over the centuries. In Britain alone, the conflict between the Catholic Church and the Protestants had caused war, government upheaval and tension for centuries. Therefore, in order to avoid those types of conflicts, no official religion for the country would ever be established. Some modern advocates try to make it sound like the founders were against religion. It only takes even a cursory reading of any of the writings of most of the founders to trash that view. The vast majority of the founders were devoted to their religion and used it to guide their actions and values routinely. To claim otherwise is fiction.

People in line with groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have taken the position that anything government in the same area code as anything religious is a violation of the Constitution, specifically the first amendment. But is it? Since the federal government intrudes into almost every area of citizen’s lives, does that mean that religion has no place in the modern United States? Or, does the Constitution mean what it says?

Let’s look at an example for the sake of argument:

There has been a monument to memorialize Americans who lost their lives in military service in the Mojave National Preserve since 1934. It is a cross no more than about eight feet tall. It can be seen from a few hundred yards. A case recently went to the United States Supreme Court to decide whether it was allowed on public lands. I suppose it is redundant to point out that no one seemed to mind for about sixty-six years. Looking back at the first amendment, did Congress have anything to do with this monument? Did they make a law establishing it? The memorial was originally placed by the Veterans of Foreign Wars which is not Congress, and, as an organization, is a heck of a lot more respected and popular. So, since 1) Congress was not involved, and 2) no law was made, and 3) no prohibition on the free exercise of religion was established, how does the mere presence of the memorial violate the first amendment? None of the specific prohibitions listed in the first amendment apply. The case is, of course, a lot more complicated than it appears. There is question of standing for the plaintiff, there is a question about land transfer and a number of other issues including that the government refused to allow a Buddhist monument in the same area in 1999, stating they were going to remove the cross. Notwithstanding all the complexities, the plaintiff in the suit argues that the mere presence of any religious symbol on government property establishes an official religion for the nation.

Using that same premise, a Star of David or a cross on a headstone in a government cemetery is an endorsement of religion. If the mere presence of a religious symbol establishes religion, then there certainly are a number of established religions in the country.

It comes down to the same argument all over again: Can judges interpret the law any way they want, or does the Constitution mean what is written? If the liberal former view is true, they Bill of Rights would have been a lot easier to write as one amendment, “Do whatever you want to” and courts could serve up the Law du Jour each day of the week.

Is Barrack Obama the President of the United States or the President of the AFL/CIO?

(This is an update of a previous posting)

In the first year of this presidency, the current administration has displayed deference, almost subservience, to organized labor. Deference would not be surprising, since organized labor is the single largest contributor to the Democratic Party. Organized labor is now getting treatment which discriminates against non-union workers and those policies are now forming a disturbing trend.

First, the automobile industry bailout: Money was given to prop up General Motors and Chrysler instead of allowing the companies to reorganize under a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In fact, the US government now owns the majority stake in the companies. In bailing out these companies, public money was taken, in the form of taxes, from auto workers in the south whose average salary is about forty three dollars an hour and given to United Auto Workers members in Michigan whose average salary is about seventy one dollars an hour. The Obama administration portrayed the action as helping the General Motors and Chrysler corporations. In fact, a chapter 11 bankruptcy would have been much more advantageous to the companies as it would have allowed renegotiation of the labor contracts and would have relieved the pressure of legacy costs to the companies. Additionally, it would not have cost tax money. The money was really a bail out of the United Auto Workers, not the companies. It hasn’t worked and the two companies have shown no signs of changing fortunes. At a recent auto show, all of the awards for vehicle of the year in all classes were swept by Ford Motor Company, the company that refused the bail out.

Second, the school voucher program in Washington, DC: The voucher program in Washington, DC cost about $7600 per student. The schools at which the voucher students attended had 90% higher scores in language skills tests and 95% higher scores in mathematics testing. The interesting paradox is that the Washington, DC public school system spends about $13,000 (almost twice as much) per student. The omnibus spending bill removed funding for the school voucher program. The Democrats, in their infinite concern for children, cancelled a program which cost taxpayers half as much and resulted in markedly better school performance. Why would they do that? The answer is easy. The teachers union has been paid off for supporting Democratic candidates in the election. The Democrats are willing to harm poor children and their families in order to pay off the union.

Third, the stimulus construction projects: The stimulus bill passed by the Democratic Congress and the Obama administration has a provision that stipulates that stimulus construction projects have to pay union wages to workers on stimulus projects. Why would that provision be in the bill? After all, it would result in less money to do projects and the ones that are completed would cost more. The reason is easy. Governments don’t build roads and bridges, private contractors do. Those contracts are awarded by bid. A non-union company can submit a lower labor cost bid than a union company. The raw materials cost will be the same. Therefore, the non-union bid will generally be lower. This provision in the bill is expressly for the benefit of union contractors to receive stimulus money contracts for infrastructure. The unions will receive money but the taxpayers will get less and more expensive infrastructure projects completed for their money.

Fourth, the “Employee Free Choice Act”: This piece of legislation is close to criminal. The rules would change and take away the right of workers to a secret union election ballot. To organize a union, all that organizers would need is 51% of employees to sign a card and the union would be installed. The cards would be public and the period of time to have them signed in unlimited. This is like the mob protection racket in Chicago in the 1930s. Union thugs intimidating workers is not progress. The intimidation may not even be the worst part of the bill. In the event of non-resolution of a union contract, after a set period of time the federal government will set wages. Hmmm… with the Democrats in power, I wonder whose side would be favored? Therefore, people who are intimidated into a union will have their wages set by the federal government. This is an economic disaster of the highest magnitude just waiting to happen. It will lead to companies closing because they are no longer profitable and revival of the union thugs who have essentially gone away (with the exception of the Service Employees International Union) due to people's reluctance to embrace unions. South Carolina just won the competition for the new Boeing 787 assembly plant largely based on Boeing not being forced to deal with labor unions.

Fifth, the health care proposal currently before Congress: More than sixty years after his death, the United States is still being hurt by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s financial policies. When FDR froze wages as part of his recovery policy, the only way to compete with compensation packages for employees was to add benefits. This was particularly true in collective bargaining agreements. Subsequently, since they could not raise wages, labor unions developed expensive and comprehensive health care benefits for their members. The current Democratic mantra is always to pay for everything by “taxing the rich”, despite the fact that it is not fiscally possible to do that. Then again, they never let logic or facts get in the way of policy. The problem with “taxing the rich” is that a significant portion of higher income earners are actually small businesses which file tax returns as individual returns and the people with large benefit packages tend to be union members. Since the unions put the Democrats in office, they expect some pay back. It was announced yesterday that the conference bill (which in the Senate version was supposed to be financed partly by taxes on “Cadillac heath plans”) now has an exemption for organized labor. In other words, if you are not in a union, you pay higher taxes but if you are in a union, you do not. Not only is that a blatant pay off to labor unions, it is likely not to pass a constitutionality challenge. As an aside, I think the pop-up timer is out on the current health care bill. Put a fork in it, it is done.

In all five examples, it is easy to see the pay off to the various unions by the Democratic Congress and the Obama administration. It is brazen and open. It is also going to massively harm the United States economy and prevent recovery. Most people in the United States don’t regularly follow politics, but they certainly recognize dishonesty and graft when they see it. A recent poll which asked people if they desired to have their jobs converted to union jobs had only 9% say yes and a resounding 83% say no. Since union membership is at an all-time low, preferential treatment for labor unions at the expense of the majority of the population is not very smart politically, as well. This is the Democratic version of the organized crime “protection” rackets and is disgusting. The current administration’s poll numbers are tanking and the mid-term elections may become disastrous for Democrats should the course not be adjusted.

Liberals and Modern Education... or Lack Thereof

With education clearly on the decline in the nation’s public schools, one has to ask why it is happening. There is a movement afloat which began in the 1920s which theorized that there was too much information available to be taught and that new information was created at a rate that defied the ability to have it taught. The theory suggested that a better way to educate the young was to “teach them to think” rather than teach facts. Using that theory, mathematics, history, and science were placed on the back burner and “life skills” and “life adjustment” classes were prioritized. We have now had many years of those theories and to be honest, they suck. To paraphrase another writer, there is no use in being able to think if you have nothing to think about.

One could argue that the purveyors of those theories didn’t understand what was being taught in the first place. While it is true that most people not involved in science, engineering, finance, architecture, etc. don’t use higher mathematics on a regular basis, the theorists completely misunderstood mathematics education. While mathematics education does teach students how to manipulate and solve equations and problems, that is only one part of the class. More importantly, mathematics teaches students how to approach any problem rationally and to be careful in what assumptions you make. Problems need to be solved in a step-wise manner in which each step must be justified and not left to whim, chance, or assumption. Many times in mathematics, the real answer to a problem is not what the answer is intuitively. Additionally, when an answer is obtained using firm and true assumptions and steps based on correct technique, one can be confident that the solution is solid and reliable. This approach is valuable to almost everyone every day. Systematic problem solving is a valuable life skill and is arguably much more important than how you “feel” about the problem. As an aside, mathematics is important to the daily life of US citizens in that the current Congress certainly has demonstrated that they have no mathematics skills.

History classes tend to be criticized as rote memory of names and dates. If taught correctly, they are anything but that. The early history of the United States, for example, is a drama worthy of any novel or made for television movie. The founders of the United States were not homogenized in their views and goals. There was much consternation about splitting with Great Britain and even more dispute on the proper construction of the government once the revolution was won. The Constitution barely passed. The study of those people tells students not only who those people were but what this country was intended to become. It tells why these people were willing to die to create a way of life where individuals, not a monarch, held sway over their own lives. The founders were real people with differing thoughts and goals, not caricatures on different currency denominations. To be able to take a side in a political discussion, educated citizens should not only understand current issues but how the country got to be where it is and what it was in the past.

Science, at its core, is the search for the truth. Scientists are sometimes accused of being amoral because they do not subscribe to determined agendas. The true scientist takes the data presented and analyzes the data to determine where the real truth lies. Real science is reproducible and does not change with varying researchers. That is why true science is “open source”. Conclusions are only valid when someone else can do the same work and get the same result. When there is disagreement, it is because the data is conflicting when studied by many, not because a political or financial agenda is overshadowing the work. The ability to remain objective and unbiased is a very useful skill in everyday life and is difficult to achieve without education. If anyone watches opinion shows or reads the newspaper, they will realize objectivity is a resource surely lacking.

Political leaders who have nefarious objectives have always sought to “dumb down” the population because it is much easier to mislead and take advantage of an ignorant mob than an educated population. Educated populations ask tough questions and demand accountability from the leaders. In a representative form of government, the government functions best and is predicated on having an educated people. The founders realized that.

The conservative political philosophy encourages individual decision making and liberty. The liberal political philosophy encourages elite groups of leaders to make decisions for the population in their best interest. The assumption is denigrating in that the people are presumed to be unable to decide issues for themselves. It is therefore in the interest of liberals to have the population less informed and less educated and, conversely, in the interest of conservatives to have the population better educated so better individual decisions will be made. It is easier to guide the population to the liberal elites' interests if they are less informed and more dependent. The teachers unions are decidedly liberal, as evidenced by their devout support of liberal politicians. Perhaps that explains why the teachers unions oppose educational programs like the voucher program in Washington, DC which clearly produced better student results at half the taxpayer cost. Teachers colleges educate future teachers on the liberal 1920s theories of education and reinforce the “life skills” agenda. The old saying is “When you find yourself in a hole, you should stop digging”. The current educational philosophy in the United States public schools has consistently shown itself to be a failure. Why not go back to what worked and teach people how to think while they actually learn some factual information? Consider it a bonus.

Our Basic Freedoms: Exposing Hypocrisy, Lies and Arrogance

The founding fathers recognized early on that in order to have an effective government in which the people had a say in their governance, a number of things had to be present. I want to discuss several and the siege upon them. The basics are:

First, an educational system which allowed individuals to be cognizant of how the government worked and the history behind the system was necessary to have voters who had a sense of what the goals of the nation were and how it became what it was.

Second, individuals needed to be free to express opinions publicly so that all sides of a discourse were presented and debated.

Third, the press needed to be free to expose dishonesty, scandal, and the political process so that a ruling class could not operate in their own self-interest without being revealed.

The United States is not a democracy; it is a republic. Benjamin Franklin was quoted as saying something to the effect: “a democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what is for lunch; liberty is a well-armed lamb disputing the outcome”. In order for any representative form of government to be viable, an informed and knowledgeable electorate is required. Let’s look at some recent developments and see where we might be heading.

Education – the public education system in the United States has been declining over the last several decades by most measures, especially in urban areas. The basic skills required over the first several centuries of the countries existence (the three R’s: reading writing, and arithmetic), and the concerted study of our nation’s founding and history have been mostly replaced. Courses centered on “life skills” abound. Children are passed despite poor performance because we don’t want them to “feel bad”. There are no winners and losers. Everyone gets a trophy. The study of early American history and the moving parts of the government have less priority than contemporary study of the Civil Rights movement and homosexual rights. The Constitution is presented in essence as “someone wrote it and it passed”. There is no discussion of the effort and great contentiousness of the debate. Most cannot tell one Founding Father from another except to spout out sound bites. Samuel Adams is a beer. John Hancock is an insurance company. It seems the purpose of a public education is presently not to teach basic skills but rather to make people feel good about not knowing those skills. The teachers unions vote for Democrats because they are liberal. The Democrats pass legislation helping teachers unions. Teachers are then obligated to be liberal. It is incestuous. By dumbing down the population, politicians can operate without intellectual confrontation and debate. It is in the powerful player’s interest to stifle an educated population. It is easier to control the uneducated. Moslem countries and dictatorships have done this for all of history. Since test scores and measures of education keep getting worse, why expand the same policies which have contributed to the decline? If my walking was getting worse, I would stop hitting my foot with the hammer.

Individual Expression - Individuals who express opposing opinions can be dealt with in several ways. The most reputable way is to debate publicly on the issues and attempt to convince the populace that your side is correct. Politicians who are pursuing questionable policies or self-interest which will not hold up to public scrutiny use the second method which is to marginalize or demonize the critic. Using character assassination to dispute the reputability of your critic is common practice now. Recent episodes (i.e., Joseph Wurzelbacher, aka Joe the Plumber, an unknown prior to asking an opportune question) have shown that anyone critical of those in power can expect to be crucified by the supporters of the powerful. Politicians even set up media teams whose specific job is to destroy an opponent’s credibility. The third method, mostly used in dictatorships, is to have your opponents “disappear” to either a gulag or a grave. Fortunately, the United States doesn’t usually use that method. Using any of these methods to intimidate an individual citizen fly in the face of the founders expressed intentions.

Freedom of the Press – The way to fight corruption is to expose it. The central weapon in that regard is the press. Investigative journalism is the bedrock of acquiring information and shining the light of publicity on government practices. One of the first things a totalitarian regime does is to muzzle press freedom. There have always been and will always be people in the press and, more recently, broadcast media with agendas and political viewpoints. Anyone can watch CNN, NBC, CBS, etc. and easily see the liberal bias. Anyone watching Fox News knows that there is conservative bias. There is much more liberal television than conservative television. There are liberal newspapers and conservative newspapers. There is conservative talk radio and some, albeit a lot less, liberal talk radio. Those who constantly complain about the bias are unrealistic. It will always be present. The founders view was that the more media outlets there are, the more likely there was to be exposure of some semblance of the truth. One side can print biased stories or opinion pieces or even lies but the other side can confront those biases, opinions, and lies and publish or broadcast opposing views. There is now movement afoot to stifle public debate by controlling the media’s political viewpoint under government control under the guise of “diversity” and “fairness”. There has never been anything fair about the media. The Hearst papers essentially started the Spanish-American War. Grover Cleveland was called an illegitimate father. The papers of the colonial and post-colonial period, as well as the Civil War period were much harsher than anything seen today. For the government to attempt to control media is dangerous and is a first step toward totalitarianism. It should be avoided at all costs. Trying to control media output is tantamount to accusing the population of being too stupid to recognize nonsense when they see it and is disparaging. If you are going to have representative government, you can’t say the people are too stupid to participate.

Another Goofy Idea

President Obama just came up with an idea on his weekly radio address that would allow people to put a check in a box on their Internal Revenue Service tax return to receive a Series I Savings Bond instead of a payment or check. Ahh...where to begin?

First, anyone who wants to buy a government savings bond can certainly do so now without the IRS's assistance. All this program does is allow the government to borrow extra money from citizens every Spring. After all, a government savings bond is just an IOU from the government for money you lent them. They borrow the money from you and give you interest on the loan. So instead of your money, you have a piece of paper. Why would anyone lend money to these guys until they constrain their spending? That is like giving money to a crack addict and expecting a return on your investment.

Second, it is not their money. It is the taxpayer's money. If someone overpays a bit to avoid writing a check at the end of the year, give them their money back. This program says "let me get back to you later with that money".

Third, will this eventually lead to all refunds being processed this way? If so, it will never work. It is easy enough to change your W-4 form to claim 935 deductions to pay less taxes during the year and just write a check on April 14th. If anything, the taxpayer will have more money to pay the bill with from the interest accrued during the year. The government will, of course, have less. The end result will be that the money the government gets to use now from people overpaying during the year will go away and the net result will be less money to the government, not more.

In one week, the President said we have to spend more and that we have to save more. Which is it?

This is a dumb idea.

What Is A Right and Does Health Care Belong in That Discussion?

Recent political discussion has brought up the concept of the "right to health care". If you need something, is it the view of some folks that you have a right to it. In order to have a "right" first you need to understand what a right is.

For example, if you are hungry, do you have a right to food? You certainly do need it to survive. However, a right implies that someone cannot take it away from you and that someone is obligated to provide that right to you. In the current political discussion, that someone is the US government. So, getting back to food, if you are able to work and provide for yourself but choose to sit in a lounge chair on your front porch, does the government have an obligation to bring you meals? I am not talking about someone who is affirmed or disabled, but rather about someone who expects assistance because of the "right" to food. Obviously, there is no right to food. If you can provide for yourself, you are expected to do so.

Do you have a right to a residence? We certainly don't want homeless people wandering the streets but if someone is capable of providing for his/herself, does the government have an obligation to house that person? Once again, I am not talking about affirmed/disabled people. The answer is obvious, of course not. Therefore, there is no "right" to a residence.

Alexander Hamilton in 1775, said: ``The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself;
and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.''

The beginning of the Declaration of Independence reads "WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of
Happiness..."

Seems pretty straightforward, I suppose. The idea, in both quotations is that rights are not granted, they are things which cannot be taken away. However, that is not always true. Some rights are specified in the US Constitution (more about that below). There are times when individual rights are balanced against the community's. You would think the life part would be pretty simple in that no one can kill you. However, it can get complicated. For example, there is the question of what constitutes life? Are fetuses considered a human life? Not to abortion proponents but yes to opponents of abortion. If someone's heart is beating but the upper brain is not functioning, are they alive? Legally, the answer is no even if they can continue physical existence without assistance for a period of time. The protection of your right to life is an obligation of the state. However, in death penalty cases, someone's right to life is taken away by the state. In those cases, it is the considered judgment of the state that the crime committed was so heinous that taking away the individual's life is justified for the protection of society as a whole.

Liberty is a little tougher. The old saying is that your right to swing your fist ends at my face. Allowing individual liberty must be balanced with the good of society. The first amendment protects free speech but not speech inciting violence or endangering the public. Per the second amendment, individuals have the right to bear arms but those arms do not include things like cannons, 500 pound bombs or other mass destruction weapons. You can have consensual sex with pretty much anyone you want but not with children. Believe it or not, in many states, it is legal to have sex with animals. In Oregon, it is not a law violation to be in public nude, even in the presence of children. Liberty as a specified right cannot be taken away unless your exercise of that liberty is deemed sufficiently harmful to society as a whole. Those specific limits to individual liberties have been litigated for as long as the United States has existed, and continue today. Some liberties have even been stretched a bit. Nude dancing in strip clubs has been interpreted as free speech. I think if people want to strip nude and dance in an indoor club out of the view of anyone except those who went there to specifically see the dancers, more power to them. But calling that free speech is a stretch.

I have always found, the phrase "pursuit of happiness" pretty vague. To take away someone's pursuit of happiness is then also a vague proposition. We clearly don't want to do it but don't know exactly what it is.

Other specified rights are included in the Constitution; protection against unreasonable search and seizure, the ability to practice the religion of choice; petitioning the government for grievances; freedom of the press; no quartering of soldiers in private homes in peace time; no self-incrimination, a speedy trial, etc. However, what is important to realize is that the Bill of Rights really specifies what the government can't do to citizens rather than what it can.

With that as a preamble, is there a right to health care? Just like food, people can certainly need it, at times. As opposed to food, a majority of the time, most people don't need it. While no one wants people to die from non-treatment of curable conditions, I revert to the previous example. If someone is perfectly capable of providing care for him/herself and chooses not to, does the rest of society have an obligation to give them a free ride? Once again, I am not talking about people who cannot fend for themselves. If health care is a "right" then the government has an obligation to care for those who can afford to take care of themselves and choose not to. I have a tough time swallowing that argument. If you are ninety seven years old with peripheral artery disease, poor cardiac function, obstructive pulmonary disease, etc., and you fall and break your hip, does the government have to provide you a hip replacement? I am not talking about whether it is risky but rather is it a right? If you choose not to wear a motor cycle helmet or seat belt despite a law requiring it, do you have a right to taxpayer-funded health care if you choose not to buy insurance for yourself? If you gorge yourself up to 600 pounds and cannot leave your bed, does the government have to pay for your care or gastric bypass? If you choose to become a heroin addict and contract hepatitis via an infected needle, do you have a right to free health care from the government?

I think is a rightful role of government to help the those who cannot help themselves due to disability or impairment but that if you have the ability to provide for yourself and do not choose to do so, you are on your own. Therefore, there is no "right" to health care and those who argue for it are doing so out of a desire to have everything provided to them without effort. Of course, if enough people go that route, no one produces anything and there is no care for anyone.

Health Care Insurance Reform Fallacies

Most of the political posturing about health insurance reform has now gone back to the old political methods of presenting heart-wrenching cases as justification for sweeping reform. It is much akin to how the media produces a sad case to promote their agenda. During the middle of the Bush administration, when the financial outlook was really good, liberal news outlets would find some obscure person somewhere and do a story on how terrible her situation was as a way of blaming the administration. It is common procedure. But alas, you will never see a story now about how bad the economy is but how well a particular person is doing somewhere.

There are ways to improve health care access and reduce costs that are fairly simple and a lot less costly than what is being proposed. I have previously written about removing state monopolies and other strategies. However, let’s think about health insurance generically and what it is supposed to do.

Back in the day, someone thought it would be a good idea to go to someone with money and sell “If you pay me some money up front and regularly, I will pay for your expenses if you have a catastrophe of some sort.” The concept would work for fire damage, severe weather damage, your herd dying of disease, your crops not coming in, and other property losses. With the invention of the automobile and the large investment required to buy one and the potential for expenses if you ran yours into someone or something, it seemed a good idea to have insurance against those expenses. The government thought it was such a good idea that laws were passed requiring insurance. Of course, mortgage holders also required insurance for properties that they held liens upon in order to protect their loan pay back. Legislatures are always willing to require insurance as: a) they are made up of lawyers; b) lawyers always pass laws that help lawyers; and c) insurance companies are quite willing to pay legislatures to support passing those laws.

As insurance companies grew, they thought of more and more things to insure against. Of course, health care cost was one of them. Somehow, the concept changed over the years for health insurance. Using the original concept, you would have insurance for catastrophic expenses. If you were injured severely or had a very serious illness, insurance would cover your expenses (or most of them depending on how much you paid up front). Somehow, the health insurance morphed into policies that paid for everything. Routine office visits, visits to the emergency room (even if it wasn’t an emergency), home health visits, cosmetic procedures, and hundreds of other expenses became covered. Of course, there is no incentive to restrain your visits when it doesn’t cost you anything. In fact, there is a tendency to want to “get your money’s worth” out of a policy for which you pay premiums. It is also inevitable that a policy like that cannot ever be financially viable for the insurance provider because the costs have no constraint. As costs rose, it became cheaper to buy policies as a group in order to average risk across a group of people. Since people generally can’t get together and form a group to buy insurance, would form these groups? Company employees. Thus began the employer-provided insurance plans.

With an employer-provided plan, there is exactly zero incentive to restrain costs for the employee. The employee only fills out forms and the employer pays all the costs. The employer goes down the tubes. Another financial innovator went to the large employers with this idea, “If you give me a certain amount of money each year per person, I will take care of their health care needs and you will have fixed costs. If it costs more, I will take the loss, if it costs less, I will keep the extra money”. Thus, the Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) was invented. Of course, the way HMOs make money is by doing as little for patients as possible. It is built into the contract. The paradox is that the companies compete by purporting to offer more services but the way they make money is by not providing them.

The real question is how health insurance veered off the normal insurance track. If health insurance was still using the same model as other types of policies, people would primarily have catastrophic insurance and would set their co-pays and deductibles by their level of risk and how much they were willing to pay in premiums. To reduce costs, there has to be incentive for people to do it. The only real incentive is to have people pay for what they use which isn’t catastrophic. For example, if you pay for an office visit, you will decide whether you really need to go before you do. If it costs six to ten times more to go to the emergency room than it does to go to your regular doctor, you will likely go to your regular doctor rather than fill the emergency room with non-emergency patients.

I am not saying people who are destitute should not have access to care. The government should help the poor and people who are unable to work. People don’t have a problem with helping people who are incapable of working. People do have a problem with paying for people who choose not to work or providing free care to affluent people who don’t need it. To reduce health care costs, the exact wrong thing to do is to make it “free”. The real answer to the problem is to go back to basics and review what health care insurance is supposed to do and the best and most efficient way to provide that care. Trying to cover everyone with “free” care and reducing physician payments until there are few doctors left is clearly not the answer.