Richard Watts: Club 20's scheme
Sunday, April 22, 2007
The April 14 Daily Press article "Club 20 committee proposes health care reform" speaks of Club 20's "plan to reform the state's health care system." But medicine in Colorado is not a state "health care system." The intention of the Club 20 plan, and of the newly formed 208 Health Care Commission, is not to reform an alleged "system," but to create one. The system they are striving to create in Colorado is socialized medicine - disguised in euphemisms such as "Mandatory," "Single-payer," "State-sponsored," "Universal," "Expanded coverage" and "Comprehensive." But "expansion of health care coverage" is not expansion of medical services. Socialized medicine causes rationing of medical services - foreshadowed by the proposed "reasonable and necessary limitations." Socialized medicine has proved disastrous elsewhere - Tennessee's (TennCare) and Canada's systems are infamous examples.
All such schemes are immoral, trampling the rights of everyone - including the right of doctors, insurers and patients to voluntarily choose the terms on which they do business.
Mike Pramenko said "we already provide health care for everyone via the emergency room." Which is caused by a new law mandating such treatment. It is government interference that has created the problems we face in health insurance and health care. To create a "system" to "expand" this interference to everyone, will make these (and worse) problems "universal." The solution is to end such interference as quickly as possible. To do so, the 208 Commission must consider proposals other than a single-payer system.
The Web site www.WeStandFirm.org is an excellent source of information on the causes of the current condition of health insurance and health care, and on what you can do to promote freedom and individual rights in medicine.
Richard Watts
Hayden
Comments
rw1963 6 years, 1 month ago
I have a correction to make. In this letter I stated: "Mike Pramenko said 'we already provide health care for everyone via the emergency room.' Which is caused by a new law mandating such treatment."
It is true that the reason that emergency rooms are forced to treat everyone, as Mr. Pramenko pointed out, is because Congress passed a law forcing doctors and hospitals to treat anyone going to an emergency room, regardless of whether they can pay. It is government interference in medicine that has caused this expensive and unworkable situation.
However, I had stated that it is a new law, but I have learned that Congress passed this law in 1985.
I would also like to emphasize that although my letter is a response to an article about Club 20's plan, there are over thirty proposals for "health care reform", which have been recently submitted by various entities to the 208 Health Care Commission. Although those proposals vary in form, most of them are strategies to create a state system of socialized medicine in Colorado.
Any system involving mandatory, single-payer, state-sponsored, universal, or comprehensive expanded coverage means socialized medicine. The only way to enforce such terms is by the force of government.
Instead of such coercion, we need a return to the moral principle of respect for the individual rights of all parties involved - including the individual rights of doctors, nurses, therapists, insurers, patients and taxpayers. Each individual, in any category or profession, has the right to voluntarily choose the terms on which he or she will or will not enter into a transaction - including transactions involving health care.
Richard Watts, Hayden
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