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Clockwize from top left: Conference speakers (from left) Paul Gessing, Burke Balch and Wesley J. Smith. Burke Balch makes a point. Wesley Smith answers a question. Burke Balch reviews his presentation as conference room fills. Dr. Frank Maldonado moderates Q&A session.

   

Conference speakers shed light on pro-life health care reform

Speakers prove affordable, unrationed coverage for everyone is plausible

May 5, 2009
Staff report

It is possible to find sustainable funding for adequate, unrationed health coverage for every American explained speakers at Right to Life Committee of New Mexico’s (RTLCNM) education conference Saturday, April 4 in Albuquerque. "We need to get the financing right," said speakers who urged the audience to participate in the legislative process. In a very quick four and a half hours, approximately 85 pro-life New Mexicans heard the history that led to the current state of our health care coverage and how to direct reform on a pro-life course in the face of political and cultural obstacles.

Health care a pro-life issue
"Health care is relevant to the pro-life movement because government is involved with determining who lives and who dies," said Paul Gessing, president of free-market think-tank Rio Grande Foundation. He laid out the 70-year history that has brought our health care system "half way to socialism." What used to be a private contract between doctor and patient has evolved into an entitlement with a host of government programs, regulations and mandates at all levels of government. When artificial parties (employers, insurance companies or government) impose on the doctor-patient relationship, costs spiral out of control as doctors and patients, no longer dealing directly with each other, now have different incentives, Gessing explained.

Returning control of health care to consumers
Gessing said Georgia puts health care back in the hands of consumers with High-Deductible Health Plans (HDHPs) paired with Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). Gessing supports free markets and individual control such as legislation passed in Georgia to return control over health care decisions back to patients and their families. HDHPs paired with HSAs offer consumers lower premiums and higher deductibles than a traditional health plan. Consumers set aside tax-free money in HSAs for future health expenses. Rather than making health care decisions in a vacuum, consumers can use price information as a component in their decision-making process on health care issues.

Gessing reported on worthy legislative efforts in our New Mexico Legislature by Sen. William Sharer and Rep. Keith Gardner. They have introduced constitutional amendments (SJR 1 and HJR 10) to preserve the right of New Mexicans to contract with doctors and insurance companies for services. Such an amendment would be a dagger to a single-payer plan. It thwarts socialized medicine, which depends on everyone participating in a government plan. His group, the Rio Grande Foundation, has started a new Web site at http://www.newmexicovotes.org to track and blog about New Mexico legislation and legislator voting records.

A pro-life plan for funding
Burke Balch, director of the Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics, presented a pro-life solution for America to afford adequate, unrationed health care. He showed the U.S. can afford to fund health care through insurer cost-shifting, but not through tax-funded government programs proposed in a single-payer national health care plan.

Hospitals use cost-shifting to cover their operating expenses. They overcharge the insurance of adequately insured patients to cover cost deficits created by treating under-insured and uninsured patients. But this puts hospitals in areas with larger under- or uninsured populations at a disadvantage. Moving private-sector cost-shifting from provider to insurer corrects this imbalance. Under- or uninsured would receive subsidized or sliding-fee scale insurance. (Details of this plan can be found at http://nrlc.org/HCR/StateBasedPlan.html.)

While the cost of health care varies from one demographic area to another, the amount of money available to pay for health care varies from one sector of the economy to another. Why do the real dollars available to pay for health care in the private sector keep pace with cost increases, while those in the public sector do not? The difference is in the mix of expenses and the source of income.

When compared to service industries, manufacturing industries experience greater productivity gains for a given improvement in the manufacturing process and a subsequent drop in product sales price. Service industries, which depend on human service productivity (for example, healthcare), will not see a proportional increase in the product or service produced and, therefore, will not see a corresponding price drop, Balch explained. For example, a doctor--even with better procedures or more knowledge available--will still only be able to see one patient at a time.

Unlike a household budget with a mix of manufactured products and service industry expenses, government budget items are largely human services. Unable to tap into greater productivity increases in manufacturing sectors of the economy, government expenses grow faster than increases in available funds. That means government revenue does rise with the economy, but real dollars available for health care shrinks. With less money available, rationing begins. Gessing gave dire examples of this in countries with nationalized medicine. Attorney Wesley J. Smith told how this is happening in Oregon where voters decided which medical conditions were higher priorities. Conditions of lower priority are not covered. Health care rationing pits us against each other, Smith said.

Why health care rationing is accepted
Smith discussed what we’re up against on the cultural front. "There’s a coup de culture going on," Smith told the audience. The moral theology of human exceptionalism is no longer the norm. The mindset behind health care rationing is utilitarian medicine based on a "quality of life" ethic. The "futile care theory" in Texas is an ad hoc health care rationing where a doctor and bio-ethics committee can override advanced directives, Smith said. They are concerned about extending the dying instead of the living. "If you want to die, it’s absolute. If you want to live, it’s not." He said proper public policy saves lives and a proper value system keeps economics out of justification for health care decisions.

Setting the right course
Gessing gave a list of reform ideas for New Mexico including a halt to taxing health care insurance, reduction of mandated coverages and allowing insurance purchase across state lines, giving patients control of Medicaid dollars through a health savings account, encouragement of broad adoption of health savings accounts and a stop to using Medicaid for "economic development." At a national level, we should give tax benefits for health care to individuals, not businesses.

Smith said pro-life and disability rights activists need to work together. He also suggested putting pressure on universities to include the position of human rights in their curriculum so our college campuses can be a place of academic freedom, not indoctrination.

Balch urged the audience to write legislators and tell them we need sustainable, permanent source of funding to expand access to health insurance without ultimate rationing and need to avoid use of general fund revenues (i.e., taxes) in favor of capturing private-sector cost-shifting.

Conference speakers
Paul Gessing is president of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Foundation. The Rio Grande Foundation is an independent, non-partisan, tax-exempt research and educational organization dedicated to promoting prosperity for New Mexico based on principles of limited government, economic freedom and individual responsibility.

Burke Balch is director of the Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics. The Powell Center for Medical Ethics serves as NRLC’s arm in fighting to protect the vulnerable born from both direct killing and denial of lifesaving medical treatment, food and fluids. It is dedicated to the memory of longtime NRLC Vice President Robert Powell, a Texan with a disability who served as a pro-life champion in leading the struggle to protect the lives of people with disabilities and older people from euthanasia. The Web site provides information about euthanasia, assisted suicide, will to live project, health care reform, and starvation and dehydration.

Wesley J. Smith is senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, attorney for the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, and special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture. His blog Second Hand Smoke is your 24/7 bioethics seminar on the importance of being human.