Always August, pt. 5: Ghost Stories

Along with the 47 million uninsured, the progressive health care reformers' other weapon in the war for hearts and minds is the fear - reinforced in think tank white papers, multi-part Pulitzer winning stories in the NY Times, and Helen Hunt movies - that one's health insurance can be too easily taken away either through job-loss or, worse, through rescission at the worst possible moment (i.e. the day after you learn you have a rare blood disease). And, it's a real fear, especially for those getting their health insurance through their employers. I have not polled this issue, but my gut tells me that any support for health care reform that exists among non-progressive Americans is there because of this fear.

The employer-based health care option is appealing on the surface. Health benefits are provided by employers, but not taxed against the employees, even though they derive a substantial benefit for which they would be taxed under normal circumstances. The system works great as long as you don't lose/quit your job ... or your employer doesn't go out of business ... or stops providing health benefits. Sounds great until it isn't. And it's not like there's much choice out there. Most people have to take whatever benefits that are available under their employer's plan, whether they need it or not.

I am not going to belabor the extreme inconvenience that arises when you lose your employer-provided health care. It's not fun, and usually comes in tandem with job loss. Then, there's the stickershock when you learn how much it can cost to replace your employer-based health care. Those benefits can be expensive once you're out of the pool (don't people ever think, "Jeez, if only I had been making that in wages instead of monthly 'benefits'!"). The employer based system is a system. It can even be a user-friendly system, but it is ultimately unreliable because you could lose those benefits in the amount of time it takes to clean out your desk.

As for rescission of insurance at the worst moment: can we call that "our worst nightmare?" It certainly is treated as such in the media, which is never quite empty of news stories and Lifetime movies about dread disease and lost insurance. But, like many other media stories, its social impact is not matched by its media exposure. Simply put: have you ever met anyone who suffered a withdrawal of their health insurance because they came down with an expensive disease or expensive injury? I have known plenty of people - personally and professionally - who have had no insurance and then were financially crippled by catostrophic health care costs, but that was because they had (often foolishly) decided to forego purchasing insurance. I'm not saying it doesn't happen - and if it does happen, it really ought to be illegal. where was the GOP when it had the chance to do this sort of market reform? - but the chances of it actually happening to you personally seem pretty low. Maybe on a par with your child being abducted by a stranger.

The fear of the loss of health insurance is a legitimate fear that provides progressives with the most compelling case for health care reform. Address the root causes of those fears, and I suspect much of the free-floating anxiety about health care would recede. But progressive health care reform doesn't address these issues. Instead, it seeks to remove them entirely through a "government option" that will effectively destroy both employer-based health insurance and private insurance. Progressives are willing to stoke fear, but they will do nothing to address that fear.

It's no secret why this is. The Left has long used fear, and the turmoil it creates, to push for the sort of radical changes that are their true goal. The leaders of the Sixties anti-war movement wanted REVOLUTION! but the crowds of kids following them just wanted the draft to end. When the draft ended, the days of mass student protests were over. No fear of the draft meant no REVOLUTION!. The same dynamic is at work here. Our fears are being stoked to smooth the way for socialized medicine governed by technocrats, no doctors and patients. Ease the fear, and the revolution dies. So, we will instead be kept in fear.