Universal Coverage: Stand Around & Wait

Tens of millions of Americans lack health insurance. Extending coverage to them has been a core goal of health reform proposals since the 1960s. President Richard Nixon offered a universal health plan in his first administration, but since then Republicans have hesitated to commit the nation to so costly an undertaking. Is it time to rethink? Should Republicans accept universal coverage as a goal?  We posed this question to NewMajority’s contributors.

Those of you who follow my blog know that I rarely discuss politics. This is because I try following the advice of the old Irish prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Or, as Bogey said to Ingrid Bergman in the farewell scene of Casablanca: “ . . . it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world . . . ”

Having said all that, Frum Forum asked me to comment on a political issue that I do know something about – government healthcare – OK here’s the deal:

America already has government healthcare, of course. We have Medicare for the old folks, and Medicaid for the people who can’t help themselves. We have the SCHIP program, and all sorts of government programs for Indians on reservations, the folks who live in the Marianas Islands, and then of course there’s prison medicine. Ask those folks how they like their government healthcare.

The program I’m personally familiar with is Tricare, which is the healthcare program military dependants are covered by. I pay $460 a year for Tricare coverage, which is pretty good as far as health insurance goes, but believe me, you get what you pay for.

How it works is like this: when you’re active duty, you don’t pay for healthcare. You get sick, you show up at the TMC – Troop Medical Center – and whatever you’ve got they take care of. Or try to. The old saying about Army medicine goes: “Foot powder below the waist, aspirin above.”

Tricare is for dependants; i.e. the spouses and children, and the retirees (like me). When you’re on active duty, it’s practically free: $40 a month, you don’t even notice it coming out of your LES (Leave & Earnings Statement).

Healthcare used to be free to vets for life, but Bill Clinton changed that when the WWII generation started requiring more and more care for their needs. I remember the outrage when the government started charging the vets for healthcare; that was the same crowd that was trying to ram Hillarycare down our throats.

Go to Clark Clinic on Fort Bragg on any given day and see how government medicine works. The place is always packed full of G.I. wives & children. A lot of them are there for things that normally you’d take care of on your own, at home.

Item: if healthcare is free, everybody becomes a hypochondriac.

In fact, there are so many dependants laying siege to the place, they make it inconvenient and slow, just to discourage people from going there.

Item: the government throws up hurdles between you and the doctor, so they don’t have to dish out.

It gets even better when you’re a retiree, or if you live away from a major military installation. In that case, Tricare looks like this:

There is a schedule of benefits that Tricare will pay for, and the price they will pay to providers. That price is generally 30% less than what that provider normally charges, so doctors do not like to take Tricare patients. But every area and region has a Tricare provider – somebody the government has their hooks into – their paying his tuition or whatever – and he has to take you.

Item: doctors do not like government healthcare.

When you show up, your Tricare provider is not happy to see you. He is taking a 30% cut in pay every second you are there, so all he wants to do is throw whatever pills at you it takes to get you out of there so he can get back to the paying customers.

I would tell you the nightmarish story my family went through with the birth of my first child, but it’s intensely personal. The results were a tragic disaster, they are permanent, my wife is permanently scarred and my daughter’s health has been affected for life. Take my word for it; the military’s mission is not to take care of your wife and family. Regardless of what they tell you otherwise.

What I will tell you about is this weird rash I’ve had since 1997, something that appeared after traipsing around the toxic battlefields of the former Yugoslavia. They are unable to cure it. At one point they had me scheduled to report to surgery, six weeks out, of course. When I showed up at surgery, the doc asked “What are you doing here?” I showed him my rash. He said, “What do you want us to do about it here at surgery?”

I went back to my TMC and asked the bureaucrat in charge why she had scheduled me to go there. I was on active duty at the time and I was a busy guy. Her answer? “Oh, I thought they could cut it off.”

“What, are you practicing medicine now?” I felt like picking up the paperweight off her desk and throwing it at her.

Item: government bureaucrats will instinctively behave in a manner that is counter to any kind of logic or common sense. When this phenomenon intersects with your health, look out.

To read other contributions to this symposium, click here.