Opinion
Students, please be realistic: Health care reform has costs
Looking for a print version?
Simply use your browser’s ‘Print’ command and a printer-friendly document will be generated automatically.
Also by Patrick McEwen:
- Non-tech students want a degree? Take calculus first (October 6, 2009)
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to Student Segregated Fees (September 30, 2009)
- Students, please be realistic: Health care reform has costs (September 16, 2009)
- Payday loan industry still preferable to alternatives (September 7, 2009)
- Storm clouds gather over ASM Council (May 7, 2009)
Sharing tools:
E-mail this article:
Historically, young people have not wielded a large amount of power in the political process. We don’t vote at the same rates as members of other demographics. We don’t have a major organized lobby representing us like other age demographics do in groups like the AARP. The most political persuasion twenty-somethings have probably lies in student issues, but on topics like health care it’s pretty safe to say young voters are not very well represented.
No matter what you think about the current health care debate, there is no doubt that many of the reform proposals being advanced by the Obama administration directly benefit the old at the expense of the young. There are a number of very specific changes advocated by President Obama that should alarm you as a young person. These changes will necessarily raise the cost of health care for young, healthy people so it can be lowered for the old and sick.
Last Wednesday, Obama stated, “Under this plan, it will be against the law for insurance companies to deny you coverage because of a pre-existing condition.” When viewed in the context of health care, this argument might seem pretty reasonable at first. But when you imagine what such a law would do to other insurance industries, the appalling consequences become much more apparent. Imagine if it were illegal for health insurance companies to deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions. Mandating that patients with terminal illnesses be permitted to purchase multimillion-dollar life insurance policies for the same price as everyone else would guarantee that life insurance would quickly become unaffordable.
This supposedly “anti-discriminatory” proposal would harm the young and healthy to benefit the old and sick the same way a provision guaranteeing equal access to fire insurance would benefit those whose homes are already on fire at the expense of those whose homes were not.
Now of course Obama is not without a solution to this potential problem. He realizes “there may be those — especially the young and the healthy — who still want to take the risk and go without coverage,” so he promises to require you to carry health insurance. While there may be benefits to a society in which everyone carries basic health insurance, such a society still demands the young and healthy pay disproportionately for the old and sick.
There is a reason Obama plans to force the young and healthy to purchase health insurance. If he wants to deliver on his promises to provide affordable coverage to everyone, he needs vast numbers of people buying insurance who won’t cost the health care system any money to counterbalance those who pay monthly insurance rates far below the dollar amount of health care they consume every month. These people who pay, but don’t benefit, will overwhelmingly be young people.
There are a number of additional proposed regulations that will negatively affect young people. Obama promises “insurance companies will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies.” If insurance companies must pay for mammograms and colonoscopies without charging extra, that means everyone is going to be paying for them whether they use them or not.
This means those in the under-40 crowd for whom the National Cancer Institute’s yearly mammogram recommendation doesn’t apply will still be paying for mammograms. Likewise, the American Cancer Society doesn’t recommend colonoscopies until the age of 50 for those without risk factors. President Obama? He recommends paying for both regardless of your age.
There are of course many more nuances of health care reform that cannot be discussed here, and many arguments both in favor and against Obama’s reform proposals. Just know, though, whether or not you support Obama’s health care reform initiatives, as healthy young people Obama will make your health care more expensive once you graduate. You may think the benefits of cheaper health care once you become old and sick will make worthwhile a lifetime of paying more for health insurance. But even if you do, we are still left with older generations benefiting (on our dime) now, while our generation counts on later returns after a lifetime of expense and financial sacrifice. Kind of like how Social Security is going to be there once we retire.
Patrick McEwen (mcewen@wisc.edu) is a junior majoring in nuclear engineering.
12 Comments | Leave a comment
Leave a comment
Herald Blogs
The Beat Goes On
Brother Ali makes an ‘Exclusive’ stop
Muckrakers
Report: Barrett to make decision by the end of the week
Extra Points
Top Classified Ads (view all)
HOUSES FOR Fall 2010. All houses are on W Dayton or N Bassett. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, or 8 bedrooms. All have parking. madisoncampusrentals.com
521 W Dayton 4BR/2BA. Marble showers, dishwasher, completely updated! madisoncampusrentals.com
1, 2, or 3 bedroom apartment available for spring 2010. meltzer@wisc.edu if you are interested!
IP hash: f698a560
Big talk from someone still on mom-and-dad’s insurance under the college student exemption. If this isn’t the dumbest and most short-sighted editorial I’ve ever read in the Herald (excepting anything by Jim Allard), I don’t know what is. We should be against Obama’s plan because we’d help pay for our mothers’ mammograms? Come on.
IP hash: 88562c9f
To use your own metaphor and describe a “sick” person getting health insurance as being equivalent to insuring a currently burning building is misguided. A burning building can be rebuilt while a human life cannot be replaced.
You also forget that many people get health insurance through their employer. What happens to those people if they lose their job sometime after they become sick? Are we supposed to say to that person: “Sorry, but since the owner of your company ran the business into the ground AND you joined the millions of Americans in this country surviving cancer, you can no longer receive treatment (via health insurance) because we don’t want to pay more for our own health insurance. The additional .005% of our annual salary will just put us over the edge on our finances.”
Lastly, you distinguish young to mean healthy while old means sick. I think it would be helpful for you to take a look around at those closest to you. There are many people you see everyday who are young but have a medical need for comprehensive and affordable health insurance and have been denied treatment or coverage based on pre-existing conditions. I sincerely hope you never have to feel the agonizing pain this injustice causes a person. And if it means I have to pay an extra few dollars a year in health insurance to prevent that, I am more than willing. To do otherwise would be inhumane.
IP hash: c90ed780
Great Column!
Notice that the arguments for Obama’s plan are at root moral arguments. The typical argument starts with: “What if Mr. Jones doesn’t have X?” and ends with “it would be inhumane not to provide X to Mr. Jones.”
Never-mind Jones’ rights and responsibilities. Never-mind why Jones doesn’t have X or what he should have to do or should have done to get it. Never-mind the proper role of government or the principle of individual rights.
No, the argument goes, Mr. Jones has a need and it’s your moral duty to sacrifice to fulfill his need. “From each according to ability to each according to need.” As one commenter said, “To do otherwise would be inhumane.”
There is an alternative to this depraved sacrificial code:
“I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.” - John Galt
IP hash: 91210598
There is too a free lunch!
We’ll save hundreds of billions by eliminating waste, mismanagement and fraud from the current government run health care systems. Yeah, that’s the ticket!
And if you don’t pass the reform we’ll just let the waste, mismanagement and fraud go on.
Of course the NEW government run health care systems will have none of that nasty waste, mismanagement and fraud - JUST TRUST THE GOVERNMENT!
Barry HO would never steer you wrong, would he?
Remember - I’m from the government and here to help you.
PS. I’ll respect you in the morning too!
IP hash: f698a560
“Randroids lose any argument by default because they live in an autistic fantasy-land.” - Not John Galt
IP hash: c8aff14d
It’s true. Much of this does come down to moral arguments. The question is, what kind of society do we want to live in? What are our moral standards?
If one subscribes to Christianity, one might be swayed by “Verily, I say to you, Inasmuch as ye have done it to one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it to me.”
Or if we are of another religion or atheist, we may find Gandhi influential:”A nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.”
Or perhaps just some awareness of the privileges that we enjoy that come from sheer luck will make us more sensitive to the situation of those who haven’t been as lucky. Most of us are fortunate in that we haven’t yet contracted an illness which led us to lose our job and insurance. Most of us were not born into poverty with hardly any chance of completing our education because we have to work full time to pay for our prescriptions or our sister’s operation. But this happens to people all the time, and the least we can do is extend a hand.
I, for one, do not wish to live in a society in which the government takes care of everyone 100%, but I do think that the government has a role to play in ensuring that everyone, regardless of whether or not they were born with a disease or into poverty, has a fair shot at life. Basic health care and education is the least we can do in giving people a shot at life and overcoming whatever hurdles life threw at them that were no fault of their own.
IP hash: 88e35757
I agree with the others, we need more force in this country. More forced taxes, forced school, forced health care…who knows, maybe we can even get forced labor to deal with the unemployed and forced thought and speech to take care of anybody who dissents.
IP hash: c8aff14d
I would love to see what our country would look like if the government didn’t tax and didn’t provide any basic services like education and health care. Oh, wait. That would look something like Afghanistan. Or Somalia. Yes, that’s exactly what we should strive for! If you want anything, pay your own goddam way. Pirate a ship if you need to. Become a child soldier. Grow opium. What do you want, a handout like those barbaric European and American bastards?
IP hash: e47750d0
Or we could have economic growth that would rival Hong Kong or Singapore.
IP hash: 91210598
Oh wait, it would look like Colonial America - we could only hope it would turn out as well, but that’s not likely with all of today’s whinny “victims”.
IP hash: 88e35757
Of course there is no other option besides being given something and taking it from someone else. People can’t think. They can’t reason. They can’t imagine any other way. We can’t expect them to figure out what they can contribute to the world in order to provide a means of survival and a way of life for themselves and their families. We can’t expect people to teach their kids what they have learned throughout their lives because, well, they haven’t learned anything! All they have ever known is a world where coercion and force is their only choice and freedom to choose is cast out as selfish and evil.
IP hash: a36d70bb
The more money you throw at the problem, the more it costs. Perhaps we should ban health insurance, then the medical industry would only charge what people could afford to pay. The government taking over 1/7 of the nations economy is not as scary as the fact that 1/7 of the nations economy is spent on health care.