The current health care / insurance juncture and the larger question of why we have government

You'll recall yesterday's post inviting you to compare and contrast Avik Roy's favorable take on the Senate health-care bill and the thumbs-down it got from the editors at NRO.

Roy, whether he's fully aware of it or not, is making a point Charles Krauthammer has been making some time, a point echoed by Jazz Shaw today at Hot Air (which I'll link to and excerpt from momentarily). I say "whether he's fully aware of it or not" because I don't detect any tone of resignation in his summation of why he's big on the Senate bill:

Full repeal was never going to be possible in a Senate where Republicans did not control 60 votes. And furthermore, we have learned that moderate Republicans in both the House and the Senate have no appetite to fully deregulate Obamacare at the federal level.

Jazz Shaw at Hot Air puts it this way:

So is the fight to repeal Obamacare pretty much over? Let me take a saw to the limb I’m currently sitting on and say… yes. But really, the fight was over shortly after the original Affordable Care Act was passed. There’s an old maxim in American politics which tells us that any entitlement program or other initiative which gives away goodies to the public, once in place, is pretty much there forever. There have been a few rare exceptions, but for the most part this is a tradition which is written in stone.

We’ve got Senators from the more conservative side saying that this new bill isn’t going to do anything to reduce costs and premiums. Of course it won’t, because the government is entirely incapable of doing that through mandates and executive orders. Even if we ignore the fact that our bloated bureaucracy composed of career politicians was never exactly suited to manage something the size and complexity of the nation’s health insurance system, any effort to institute top-down socialization of something as inherently capitalist in nature as the health insurance industry was doomed to blow up in your face.

But that’s not even the core fault in our stars here. You see, even if the GOP manages to remove Obamacare, all they’ll be able to do is take out the parts which most conservatives hate (such as the mandates). Taking out the goodies is not only harder, but likely impossible. Obamacare was structured brilliantly in that the things everyone was going to like (mandatory coverage for preexisting conditions, parents keeping their kids on their plans longer) kicked in fast. It took years for the really ugly features to fully come on line (higher penalties for not having insurance, additional mandates driving up premiums). That means that people were already used to the candy being handed out before the flaws in the system ensured that it would begin to implode.

So who wants to be the one to take away those goodies now? Nobody. And this leaves the GOP in the position of trying to make it look like they can still play Santa and hand out all the sugar without the slug of bitter medicine to follow. In order to “fix” this system and make it solvent we would have to deliver bad news which is the political equivalent of blowing out the pilot light in your oven and sticking your head in.

“But wait,” I can hear some of you saying. “If this doesn’t work, can’t we just go back to plan B and let Obamacare implode on it’s own?” Not really. Whoever is in charge will take the blame no matter whether they supported it originally or not. We now basically have a new entitlement theory in which more than 60% of American voters think that affordable health insurance (not Health Care, which is a critical distinction the media generally tries to ignore) is a human right and it’s the government’s job to make sure they get it. But the cost of health insurance isn’t dictated by the government… not for long, anyway. It’s dictated by the cost of actual health care and Washington still hasn’t the beginning of a clue as to how to bring that down.

So what’s the only solution left to keep delivering bread and circuses to the masses? Probably a completely top-down, socialist single payer program, which will rapidly bankrupt the entire system. (California is already finding that out the hard way.) You can expect to eventually see some Republicans going along with that line of thinking too, believe it or not. It’s that or the aforementioned head-in-the-oven scenario.

Now, there's some resignation for you. As I say, Krauthammer has been asserting this for some time.  He, like Shaw, says that the "A"CA, even though it polls dismally, has been in place long enough that the mindset positing that health care and / or health insurance is some kind of right has permeated society and is not going to go away.

I hate resignation.

I will not stand for it when the truth is obscured thereby - and especially when that obscuration leads to bankruptcy. If I wanted to live in Venezuela-like conditions, that's where I'd move.

So I was glad to see David French at NRO take on the leftist smears on the Senate bill with this reasoning:

Here’s the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson with an odd attack on Republican health care plans:

The “health-care bill” that Republicans are trying to pass in the Senate, like the one approved by the GOP majority in the House, isn’t really about health care at all. It’s the first step in a massive redistribution of wealth from struggling wage-earners to the rich — a theft of historic proportions.

Not to be too pedantic about this, but the government isn’t “redistributing” wealth when it lets a citizen keep more of his money, and it isn’t “stealing” from the poor when it cuts benefits they didn’t actually own. Welfare programs like Medicaid represent a forcible transfer wealth. Welfare is the redistribution. And if there’s any actual argument for “theft,” it’s the theft of money from the private citizen by the government.

But that would be hyperbole. In civilized societies, people understand that a certain degree of taxation is necessary for a nation to function. Safety nets are compassionate and prudent. But it is dangerous and wrong to get confused about who owns what. I own the money I earn. America’s less fortunate citizens don’t own Medicaid. It’s a privilege, not a right — a privilege that is subject to the same budgetary and fiscal concerns inherent in any other government program, including national defense. 

Entitlement culture plagues this nation, and it plagues America’s poorest communities. So let’s speak accurately about ownership and redistribution. Medicaid is a program, not property, and it’s not theft to attempt to moderate its enormous financial cost. 

Or let me put it in my own words. There is no right to health care. It is impossible by definition. How did people in the year 1300 exercise their "right" to a triple bypass? My point being that caring for health is a human activity borne of human volition. The only reason it exists is because someone wants to do it. One cannot have a right to the activity of one's fellow human beings. Down that slippery slope lies the s-word. 

At the very least, the likes of Roy and Krauthammer could preface their observation that, hey, the populace has bought into this and it's just where we're inevitably headed with the assertion that we'll be plunging headlong into policy based on utter falsehood.

Damn it, when does somebody besides four Senators say what is plain? We can't even begin to counteract the it's-a-right notion if everybody is worried about votes, viewership and readership.

And I really bristle when the notion is put forth that getting government the hell out of health care, and the insurance coverage thereof, is somehow a mere conservative wish list, something conservatives may get part of but will probably have to live with the compromise attendant to the art of the possible.

No.

We are talking about an individual's freedom to keep what is his or hers.

It's the current battle line in the twilight struggle over the proper scope and function of government.

Government should not be in the business of providing services. James Madison made that quite clear.

Refuse to be resigned to a service-providing government as a done deal. Refuse to acquiesce to that notion prevailing. There is nothing radical about the pre-Progressive-era understanding of what government was for.

And someone, somewhere, invite Roy and Krauthammer to a picnic, a car race, a jam session - anything, anywhere outside the damn Beltway.