2008 Woodie Awards
The state of health
JACOB MORRIS
ARBITER JOURNALIST
Issue date: 10/13/08 Section: Opinion
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The free-market ideal has potential to provide the best, most affordable health care to the individual, yet the status quo is ripe with government intervention. Entitlements like Medicaid and Medicare claim to ensure care for the elderly or disadvantaged, but the bureaucratic system fails to live up to its promise.
The Idaho Center for Autism provides intensive therapy for children with developmental disabilities, funded solely by Medicaid. After each year of therapy, the department of Health and Welfare, not the child’s therapist, decides, based on pages and pages of paperwork, the type of care that child receives.
“Sometimes they don’t meet the criteria that’s set. I think the paperwork is so cumbersome and overwhelming that they don’t get the care they need,” Stephanie Whipps, ICA executive director, said.
The same people who call for a government takeover of health insurance are also those who claim health care is a right for all people. Yet autistic children are only a small example of afflicted people who don’t receive the necessary care. The government doesn’t seem to allow the “right” of health care to certain cases that don’t meet their pre-defined criteria.
The HMO Act of 1973 required employers to provide health insurance, thus changing the social implications of medical treatment. People were no longer individually responsible for providing their own insurance.
People soon realized somebody else was paying the bill, so the bill got higher.
With taxation for entitlement programs on every member of the workforce, society has been less willing to give on behalf of their own charity. People once gave what they could to the sick, the poor or the disabled, knowing they had the freedom to do so, and doctors treated their patients with the support of a community.
Now, we are fed rhetoric that would see every person in the world entitled to a blanket of medical treatment that would include only the specific mandates of a central planner without regard to medical theory that might exist outside of the mainstream.
If medical institutions were allowed to function autonomously, doctors would be allowed their practice, patients would be allowed their care, prices would not inflate or augment, and the lighter tax burden would enable the public to donate time, treasure or talent to healing the sick.
Free the market of health care and see healthy men and women. See children get the treatment they deserve, not the treatment they’re allotted. Any regulation should be in requirements for health insurance providers to cover treatment for pre-existing conditions. The answer is not government intervention.
A person has the responsibility to maintain their own health and the freedom to help others do the same. The social burden begs compassion, but the legal alternative frames oppression.
Viewing Comments 1 - 1 of 1
B. Thompson
posted 10/20/08 @ 8:49 AM MST
As a parent of an Autistic Spectrum Child, I am very familiar with the limitations that public programs have instituted for my child. I certainly agree that what is allowed under Idaho Medicaid in terms of treatment opportunities and assistance does not meet all of the needs my son has. (Continued…)
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