Democrats Get What They Wanted, Then They Get Angry and Gun Down the Guy Who Gave it to Them

United Healthcare, Obamacare, and Why Liz Warren Celebrates

The brutal street murder of Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Healthcare has renewed the old discussion of American healthcare. Leftists by and large are reiterating their demands for “free healthcare” and saying “healthcare is a human right.” Some of the more unhinged lefties are cheering the death of Thompson and calling the guy who shot him in the back a hero or even Robin Hood. As Liz Warren said, “you can only push people so far.” I think Liz means that if you don’t like something, you should just get out the 3-D printer and make a ghost gun and take care of business.

Is Healthcare a Human Right?

Is healthcare a human right? And what exactly does that mean? If healthcare is a “human right” (what rights are not “human rights” anyway?)—then is food a human right? How about water?

In my town, we have access to clean potable water, but the city sells it to us. Every month they send me a bill, and it’s not cheap. Plus if I would rather drink bottled water, you can’t demand that for free, even if you’re dehydrated. Even if it’s 100 degrees outside. You have to pay for it. It seems to me that water is a universal human need… but it costs.

And what about food? You have to eat, but why aren’t grocery stores told they must provide free food to whoever wants it as a human right?

But healthcare is something different. Having worked in the medical field for a long time, I’ve noticed a peculiar trait; nobody in America wants to pay for healthcare. We’ll pay for bougie bottled water, we’ll pay for bread and eggs, we’ll pay for fast food or gourmet dining, but we balk at the very idea that getting sick should come with a price tag.

When the lefties say they want healthcare, they actually don’t mean healthcare. They want “free” healthcare. In the lefty vernacular, the word “free” means, “I don’t have to pay for it,” but it doesn’t mean nobody pays.

In order to have healthcare you need doctors, clinics, and hospitals. These are staffed by trained individuals who spent a lot of money on their education. They work all day, sometimes long hours or night shifts. Who is paying them? Or are they supposed to work for free? And the places where they work cost money, too. Who pays for the clinic? The doctor’s office? Who pays for the staff who books appointments and enters information into electronic medical records systems (mandated by Obamacare)? Who pays for the MRI machines or the CT scanners? Who pays for the skilled technologists who operate them? Who pays for the lab services for blood tests? Who pays for the hospital beds and the helicopters for life flight services?

Who pays for the hospital to stock a wide range of pharmaceutical products so the hospital always has drug and bloods at the ready? And who pays to discard these medications when they expire or get “wasted” (ordered but not completely used)? You may have never thought of this, but you can’t just dump that stuff in the trash can. Some of it has to be incinerated. Some of it goes into hazardous waste. Some has to be mixed with activated charcoal and then can go to hazardous waste? Some can be “sewered” (the official word for flushing it down the toilet). And the hospital needs experts on staff to sort this stuff out, dispose of the drugs, do all the related paperwork (some drugs can only be destroyed on video, so there is a record), and pay the bills. Who pays for all of that? (I point this out only to say that healthcare has a wide range of expenses most of us never think of.)

Now the “healthcare is a human right” people would say that the government ought to pay. That shows a fundamental ignorance of the left, because the government has no money. The only money the government has is taxpayer money, so let’s call it what it is. Lefties want taxpayers to fund healthcare.

For Conservatives and people who understand money and markets, you can run a system only one of two basic ways. Either the system is market driven where the market sets the prices based on supply and demand, or the system is controlled by the government which defines how the system works, usually by setting prices and making the rules, for instance, regarding deductibles and co-pays.

The Plastic Surgeon

A great lesson in healthcare is available to you at the office of your local cosmetic plastic surgeon. Cosmetic procedures are not usually covered under healthcare insurance, so plastic surgeons work differently.

• Their offices are very upscale and comfy. I saw a plastic surgeon once several years ago and they served soft drinks, bottled water, and snack items in the waiting room. And you never had to wait long. The staff was always pleasant.

• The team will share a sort of “menu of services” complete with prices before you get there or while you’re still in the waiting room. They tell you how much it might cost to get a new nose or a Brazilian Butt Lift (known in the trade as BBL).

• While they may explain pricing, most of the prices are bottom-line drive-out costs. They don’t surprise you.

• The first consultation is usually free. The physician and sometimes a nurse or two will discuss with you what you want and they will explain how it’s done, what to expect, recovery time, and all of the rest. And then they tell you what it costs.

• If you decide to undergo the procedure, they want payment upfront. If you want major work done, they have lenders who can help you get a loan. But the doctor is paid before you go under anesthesia.

The amazing thing about this no-insurance type of coverage is that plastic surgery is not that expensive compared to other similar procedures. Patients are generally pretty happy. The amenities of the practice and the care you get are very high quality. The system is very transparent. You know what they can do, what the complications or side effects might be, and what it will cost before you start.

Our current system of healthcare is opaque as a rock. Patients undergoing cancer treatments have lots of doctor visits, but they don’t know what any of them cost. Neither do the doctors, for the most part. The system just pushes you through and the insurance companies squabble about what they will or will not pay.

The Miseries of Obamacare

Obamacare was never “healthcare reform.” It was mandated insurance coverage, but insurance companies were always a big part of the problem. By making Obamacare all about mandated insurance, Barack just put the fox in charge of the hen house.

If Obamacare and the lefty dream of “universal Medicare” were to come true, the government would own healthcare. (Quick, name one thing the government is in charge of that works better than private versions of the same service…) There are only two ways to have healthcare for a large country like the United States.

1. You let the market set the prices, sort of like plastic surgery now. And if companies want to offer private or group insurance, they are free to build policies for customers. Some customers might want coverage only for catastrophic problems, others might want every little thing covered. Insurance could do that, as it wanted. Policies can make their own rules and set their prices; customers could buy or not buy. And cash would be an option.

   1. Under our current system, cash is not an option

   2. But we should allow people to pay cash for healthcare, if they want

2. You let the government run things and healthcare becomes one giant Department of Motor Vehicles. Healthcare is not air; it is a product and service. It is limited. There is not enough to give everybody everything they want. This means a government-run system has to ration healthcare. It’s an economic law.

So you either let the free market reign or you can let the government decide who gets what. In America, healthcare approval ratings were more than twice as high before Obamacare than after. Let me remind you that FEMA had an official policy of denying emergency services to people with Trump signs on their property. We MAGA people are not going to get a fair shake in government-run healthcare, that’s for sure.

Fake News About Bleeding Out in Parking Lots

Recently, stories have circulated the media about women “bleeding out in hospital parking lots.” These phony stories alleged that women having difficult and potentially life-threatening miscarriages could get to a hospital, but were refused treatment because the state had anti-abortion laws in place. They thus died in their cars from loss of blood.

These stories are as fake as Joy Reid’s hair color.

• No hospital may turn away any person for any reason if they need emergency life-saving care. You can be a criminal, you can be the worst guy in a drug cartel, you can have inflicted the wounds yourself, you can be broke, you can spit on the physician—no hospital or emergency service can reject you for any reason.

• The medical profession has an elaborate system of how medical needs are classified—there are so-called ICD codes for various diseases, injuries, preventive treatments, and so on. A miscarriage is not an abortion. An abortion is not a miscarriage. The healthcare system does not mix these up, although lefties in the press do. It is not illegal to have a miscarriage at any stage in pregnancy.

• Non-emergency care may be predicated on your ability to pay, but the United States has a network of hospitals that take indigent patients, meaning there are resources for those with limited financial ability to pay. Many hospitals will also work with poor patients to reduce costs and set up low- or no-interest payment plans.

As a survivor of Obamacare, I think it was more expensive than my previous private health insurance by a company with a good reputation. That policy costs me (even way back when) $800 a month, partly because I was an older person. My deductible was $2,000 and they covered a few preventive services and offered a pharmacy co-pay program.

Do you know who wrote the infamous Obama slogan “If you like your health insurance, you can keep it?” John Lovitz. A comedian wrote it. It turned out to be a big lie. (There is a tradition of White House speech writers who later go into comedy—Lovitz is one, Ben Stein is another.)

I was forcibly transitioned to a sketchy Obamacare policy. My doctor didn’t take it. Neither did any hospital in my county. Prestigious hospitals nearby almost laughed me off the phone when I announced I was an Obamacare patient—even though I had been treated there before with private insurance. The benefit, I was told, was that Obamacare was cheap. And it only cost $600 a month, which meant I saved $2,400 a year in premiums. But nobody would take it. It’s like getting a gift card to Woolworth’s. The other problem is my deductible was $7,000 and that was the lowest deductible I could get.

Now let’s do some math. Lefties hate math which is why it’s so easy to fool them into thinking socialism is good. Let’s say in one year I have a health problem that winds up costing $10,000.

• Under private insurance, I pay $9,600 a year for my premiums. I also have to shell out $2,000 for my deductible. That means I paid $11,600 for the year and I got my $10,000 worth of treatments.

• Under Obamacare, I pay $7,200 a year for premiums. I also have to shell out $7,000 for my deductible. That means I paid $14,200 for the year and I got my $10,000 worth of treatments but by a doctor and hospital far away.

Obamacare was only cheaper as long as I didn’t need service. Once I need a few thousand dollars worth of care, the Obamacare policy is actually more expensive!

When Obamacare was first being crafted, Barack Obama worked with insurance companies to set things up. His ostensible idea was that if everybody had insurance, insurance would magically be able to pay for healthcare for everyone. The government would help apportion things.

So Obamacare set up a system that would both crush the United States with medical debt and provide crappy service. Lefties cheered Obamacare.

United Healthcare

United Healthcare was and remains one of the pillars of Obamacare. They were a key player in setting up the system and figuring (rightly, I suspect), that they would be a key beneficiary of all those insurance premiums rolling in. Obamacare put over 21M more Americans on the insurance rolls (without, by the way, adding one new doctor or hospital—the Affordable Care Act is over 900 pages long and it never mentions adding healthcare personnel to the system—only insurance companies). Many of these newly insured folks cannot afford health insurance so it’s subsidized, which means taxpayers foot most or part of the bill. Healthcare.gov says that Obamacare offers many policies and 80% of them cost less than $10 a month. So you pay for your own Obamacare or other insurance, plus you help pay for the coverage of other people by way of your ever-increasing taxes.

The murder of Brian Thompson and the subsequent beatification of St. Luigi Mangioni show the total ignorance of the left. If Mangioni or Democrats in general were angry about how United Healthcare did business—as is being presumed—then they are mad at the mess that they, the Democrats, have made of our once-great healthcare system. Democrats created the United Healthcare/Obamacare system of claim denials, waiting lists, rationed care, and slapdash services. But when some guy guns the Obamacare CEO down in the street, Taylor Lorenz and Liz Warren and other people are jubilant at this act of justice!

(The mysterious murder of Brian Thompson and the identity of Luigi Mangione is another story for another day.)

Fixing the Healthcare System?

Obamacare sold itself as healthcare reform. It reformed nothing, but buried us deeper and deeper into a stupid system. There are lots of things we can and should do to fix our healthcare system and they’re not about getting more insurance companies involved. I’m not for murdering health insurance executives but I’m also not for thinking health insurance companies were going to “reform” anything.

Here are a few ideas for immediate fixes.

• Get rid of fraud in Medicare and Medicaid. Medicare and Medicaid fraud costs American taxpayers $100B per year. Yet nobody even takes this seriously. And some of this fraud is very obvious—like the one-person shopping center clinic that treats 1,000 patients a day.

• Get rid of waste. Medicare and Medicaid waste runs at another $60B a year, which taxpayers cover. These are over-payments due to errors, such as performing unneeded surgeries, doing unnecessary tests, and so on.

• Then get rid of fraud in other payers (insurance)—Forbes says that this amount is $308B a year.

• Aggressively reduce “preventable medical errors.” These are so common they’re listed in the top 10 causes of death in America. They include things like amputating the wrong leg, failing to administer proper medicine or giving a patient the wrong medicine or the wrong dose, and hospital-acquired infections. These cost us about $20B a year and result in about 200,000 deaths.

• Set up a system so that “mid-level” healthcare workers can do a lot of things that formerly were reserved for physicians. These are people like nurse-practitioners, nurse-prescribers, physician assistants, and so on.

• Make prices transparent. Clean up medical billing so that it is prompt and clear what you are paying for. (I once got a bill from a hospital for “lab services” for my mother who was in a nursing home and not at the hospital. I never found out what was done or why it was done. I did manage after several days to find out that my mom had blood drawn in the nursing home which was sent to the hospital for testing. But I never found out why or what the results were! The nursing home didn’t know and the hospital had no clue. I was told to ignore the bill since “Medicare would pay it.” Do you smell fraud?) Even if insurance or Medicare/Medicaid picks up the tab, the patient should be able to see the bill and approve it.

• Encourage cash. More physicians should adopt the plastic surgeon cash-for-services model.

Doctor, Doctor, Tell Me The News

This is going to come as a huge surprise to most people, but physicians tend not to carry health insurance. This isn’t because they can’t afford it or they don’t know how to get it—they don’t need it.

Here’s why. Most hospitals and physicians will negotiate a price with you for non-emergency services. If you are willing to pay cash upfront, they will often discount their prices. (One reason prices are so high in healthcare is that it can take months, even years for bills to be paid. Bills are often not even sent out for months and then they are processed, handled, disputed, routed around, and finally left to languish on someone’s desk to get paid. So the lure of upfront money almost assures you can get a discount.)

So if you go the hospital and say, “I want this surgery that costs $50,000, but I only want to pay $25,000. But I’ll pay cash to you right now. You won’t have to bill this or deal with paperwork, you won’t have to fight the insurance company and you’ll have the money before we even check in for the surgery. You won’t have to wait or process the claim.”

Most hospitals say, “Deal!”

What people don’t realize about healthcare is that it is (or used to be) a free market. Prices are set by the agreement between buyer and seller. If you know the right people to talk to, you may be able to negotiate a good price.

Now you might argue cash-and-carry healthcare is a dream for most people. Who can afford to pay such prices? But why can’t insurance providers work this way? Why can’t our system work with aggressive negotiations and prompt payments in exchange for price reductions?

Answer: because it doesn’t want to.

While the brutal shot-in-the-back murder of Brian Thompson is a loathsome crime (and lefties are cheering it!), it is indicative of the schizophrenia of the left. They wanted Obamacare. They’re just not happy now that they have it.