As I mentioned back in July, for many of those supporting some sort of national health insurance program, establishing such a program is a moral question. I talked about one aspect of that question here. President Obama’s speech on Wednesday night led me to think about another one.
First, President Obama said that his health plan would:
Cover the uninsured. (Actually, he would force the uninsured to buy health insurance, even if they do not want to do so. He would provide tax credits to people who are deemed by the government to need a subsidy to be able to afford insurance.)
Be fully paid for by tax increases and eliminating "waste". (See below)
Not reduce anybody’s quality of care. (See below.)
Not require people who are satisfied with their present health insurance to change it. (This is a little different than what he said before. Previously, he said that if you liked your present health plan, you could keep it. Now he is saying that would not be "required" – by the government – to change it. Of course, if President Obama’s overall plan is such that your employer or insurance company decides not to, or is not allowed to, offer what you currently have, you will no longer be able to have it. But it won’t be because the government "required" you to change. You can tell he used to be a law school professor.)
That is his plan. Actually, it is the outline of a plan. President Obama still hasn’t proposed a bill. His speech on Wednesday night was merely a more specific set of general principles than he has stated before. We still don’t know the details of his plan; and, as they say, the devil is in the details. Which brings me to my question.
As I said above, President Obama and many of his supporters clearly feel that passing his plan, or at least passing some kind of universal health care plan, is a moral obligation. But what do you do in this situation: You hear what the President is saying, and you know he is sincere, but you don’t think his plan will work. The President says it can be paid for without increasing the deficit or cutting care. But what if you don’t believe that? Every President says he will save money by cutting waste. Why is President Obama going to be the one who finally succeeds? What if you believe that the pressure of rising medical costs that the government has to pay for will, eventually and inevitably, lead to less care being provided because the government won’t have the money to pay for it?
Certainly, there is a moral claim to make sure all people have medical care. But if you have a good health plan now, and if you think the result (though not the intention) of President Obama’s plan will be that the plan you and your family now have will no longer be available to you or will not be as good in the future as it would otherwise be, what do you do? What do you do if you honestly believe that the plan covering your family will not be as good in the future because of what the President is proposing?
Do you choose the morality of doing good for society as a whole over doing good for your family? Do you favor a plan that its supporters say will help others even though you believe it will hurt your family? The President would probably say that such a question is "scare tactics"; he is not going to let that happen. But we get promises from politicians, even Presidents, all of the time, and some of them are not kept.
So what do you do? How do you weigh your obligation to society versus your obligation to your family? Obviously, you can’t hurt society to help your family. But what do you do if you think President Obama’s plan would hurt your family even though it might help society? If you believe President Obama’s plan will work as he promises, it’s easy. But for those of us who have had more experience with government promises and government performance, it is not so easy. We are left with a choice that is not quite as easy as President Obama says.
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