Health Care and Big Brother

I have a right to health care and by gum I expect you to pay for it!

That may not be the exact verbiage, but that is certainly the meaning of the cries we hear on the news every night, and the rhetoric we are hearing in Washington these days. I have looked, several times in fact, but I just do not see health care in our bill of rights. I wish some one would point it out to me. Maybe some think it is the natural extension of our right to Life, that Jefferson so eloquently placed in the constitution. If that is the case, I can think of a few other things that come before health care in order to maintain life. One would be food, if I have a right to health care, shouldn’t I have the same right to have food on the table?

And of course if I have a right to food on the table I should be able to expect the government to provide it for me don’t you think?

All kidding aside, I do not want the government involved in health care. They can’t take care of the things they are in charge of as it is, do you really want your life and death decisions made by committees in Washington D.C.? Remember, the definition of a committee is a creature with 6 or more legs and no brain. It is beyond my comprehension to understand how people can cry for socialized health care when, 1) People who enjoy ‘free’ health care are flocking to this country to pay for operations here because they can’t get them in a timely fashion where they live, or the doctor they are required to use is incompetent or any of a number of other reasons. 2) The same people who cry for government sponsored health care are the same ones who decry the government’s response to situations like Hurricane Katrina. Don’t forget, that the same government who would be managing your health care is the same government that created the IRS, the driver’s license bureau, the highway administration, testaments all to the efficiency of government bureaucracies.

Remember too, There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, free health care isn’t either. First, the government has no money except that which we give to it, so we have to pay for anything the government hands out, it isn’t free. Not only isn’t it free, since it is not controlled by a free market, it is by nature more expensive than it should be. Government bureaucracies always grow beyond their needs and never seem to stop. Second, without a free market to create competition, why should anyone do their job any better than they absolutely have to? There is no incentive to do good work, or to keep costs down. Look at Soviet Russia in the 1970’s is that what you want in health care? Please move to a country that will provide it for you if that is the case. I want my doctor to be skilled, and able to charge as much as the market will bear for his or her services, the market will cull the dogs out of the pack.

Certainly there are people who feel disenfranchised when it comes to health care, but we have choices of what we want to spend our money on, if health care isn’t on the list, then accept your decision and move on. Do not come crying to me that you want me to pay for your health care because you had other things you wanted to spend your money on. Conversely, if I choose not to purchase health insurance, I don’t want the government or anyone else trying to force me to spend my money on something that I do not want.

TANSTAAFL

TANSTAAFL, an acronym for, “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” This was coined by the Award Winning Science Fiction Writer Robert Anson Heinlein. It was used first in his novel,”The Moon is a Harsh Mistress,” and it seemed to show up off and on in several of his works. TANSTAAFL actually came into the popular vernacular years ago although I think that its use has faded, probably more because people don’t want to believe it than because it isn’t factual, because it is.

I think this country is in dire need of remembering that term, and coming to grips with the simple truth it contains. Nothing in this world is free, yet every day in the streets and on the news people are complaining about how they have been mistreated and how they have a right to this or that. I would like to know who was passing out these rights and why I wasn’t in line when they were being distributed.

I was watching the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric. I normally don’t watch that news program as I like CNN Headline News’ Erica Hill much better. Anyway, that isn’t the point, the thing that caught my attention was a story they did on protesters marching on their mortgage lender. These were people caught up in the sub-prime mortgage crisis this country is facing right now.

One woman was interviewed who said that she wasn’t looking for help because her husband lost his job, or (and she actually said this) because they didn’t read the contracts they were signing, but it was because there was a crisis in this country and the country needed to help them out. Personally, I had a little trouble understanding that.

First, I had always thought that losing a job was one of the major reasons people would lose their home. Suddenly they couldn’t afford it any longer, they would default and the bank would foreclose. Certainly heartbreaking for the individual family, but that isn’t cause for a national crisis.

Second, I can certainly understand how stupidity and ignorance could be the root cause of a national education system crisis, but how does this translate into a national mortgage crisis that I am supposed to be concerned with? I don’t see the connection between someone’s greed and my pocketbook.

It has always been my understanding that the interest rate people are charged is to pay the lender for the risk of the loan. Lower rates are applied to loans with less risk, higher rates to those with greater risk. That is how the industry pays its’ bills. Now while Mrs. Grundy may not have been smart enough to read the contract, the underwriter certainly was and should have known better.

Now we are marching in the streets and saying that the Government has to bail them out of the mess they made. Hogwash! If the underwriter doesn’t want to renegotiate the loan, and the buyer can’t make the payments, let the underwriter foreclose and try to move the property themselves. That is the risk they assumed when they wrote bad loans. That is the risk that they were very aware of when their greed caused them to get people in debt over their capacity to pay.

It wasn’t my idea to provide money to people who did not have the capability to repay it, and I have received not one thin dime in interest for those loans. The mortgage company made the money on those loans so they should be the ones to absorb any losses.

Back to Mrs. Grundy. Let’s stop and think for a moment, okay? Was she living on the street before she purchased a house beyond her means? Wasn’t she paying rent to someone somewhere? Of course she was. How is she hurt by this? Her credit has a stain on it. Ooops! I forgot, she didn’t have good credit before they lent her the money for the house or it wouldn’t have been a sub-prime. She has lost nothing and has actually had a couple of years in a better house than she was renting before all this took place.

Again, not my problem. The mortgage lender knew and accepted the risks involved in writing these sub-prime loans. The borrowers, while it is unfortunate, would have still been paying someone rent during this time period so they aren’t truly out anything. It looks like a wash to me. If the mortgage lenders go out of business, they are the ones at fault in the first place and need to step up and assume the loss if needed.