The Problem with Health Insurance

Maybe a lot of what I've said is considered more to the right politically than other Obama supporters, but on this issue, my Christianity pushes me to the left. The idea of insurance comes from different historical sources, but one of them is the Church.

In Acts 4, it says " And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any [of them] that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common."

And when Paul first met with James, Peter, and John, after his conversion, he reports that "... they would that we should remember the poor; the same which I also was forward to do." (Gal 2:10)

From the earliest history of the church, they were coming together, sharing with each other and the poor people of their communities. So I think it's fair to say that the idea of a community coming together to try to help out those in need, which became insurance, is a Christian one, if not exclusively so.

So here's the problem: profit. Just as the Corporation has perverted the profit motive of entrepreneurial capitalism (see my post on debt), so Insurance For Profit has perverted the charitable nature of its roots.
Of course, the marketing departments still push the altruistic image of insurance helping you out in need; but even before Michael Moore's movie "Sicko" exposed them, we all knew that health insurance had become a racket of trying to keep its own customers from ever benefitting from their ever-increasing premiums, as well as squeezing employers for their contributions. But the practice of medicine is not really a business, not like other businesses. When you have a demand for their services, it isn't like saying to yourself, "gee, I need a bar of soap." Doctors have always made a comfortable living, most of them, but it wasn't until the insurance clerks got involved that we went from a Health Care System to what Dr. Andrew Weil calls a "Disease Management System".
When you get sick or hurt and require medical attention, you can't think about money; you have to think about getting better. Likewise, a doctor in practice can't think about costs; he has to think about what his patient needs to get well. I use the term "can't" in a certain shorthand sense, of course. Nowadays everybody thinks about what medical care costs. This is a perversion of civilization's traditional policy of favoring life over death, one reason civilization is preferable to barbarism. We band together so that more will survive, not just the rugged individuals. We spread out the cost of staying alive because, even though it may not seem like to some people, it is actually in our interest to help each other. That is one message that is common to practically every religious belief, not just Christianity.
Insurance For Profit favors profit over life. So what is the answer? Congress really should ban insurance, at least health insurance, for profit. That would be my simplistic approach, and it doesn't look likely. But only a non-profit insurance organization can properly concern itself with its members needs for care as its top priority. Statistics can provide the way to predict what is needed, as it does now, but without the profit (or bloated CEO salaries). Enter the Public Option. This approach can make insurance affordable, in fact so affordable that some Republicans have complained that the Public Option will put Insurance for Profit out of business - and this with the extra burdens of accepting anyone who wants to join up and having no exclusions for pre-existing conditions. How can it be expected to perform so well? It will run on a non-profit basis. It can pay for itself and still cost its members far less than the Insurance for Profit.
The Public Option, as President Obama has described it, is a brilliant proposal. It is completely voluntary, so that it must stand or fall on its own merits. That makes it vastly superior to the compulsory insurance approach such as Massachusetts has.

That voluntary quality is very important to me, for several reasons. One is that it indicates that the President actually believes in its inherent superior quality, and he believes in the public's ability to recognize it. The other reason is that choice is what distinguishes it from Socialism. Christianity says "everything I have is yours"; Socialism says "everything you have is mine."