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Health Care HypocrisyMany of the pundits attacking government health insurance rely on government health insurance for their own families.

By Daniel GrossPosted Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2009, at 9:46 AM ET

Dick ArmeyYou have to give Whole Foods CEO John Mackey credit for having the courage of his convictions. Last week, the libertarian penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal arguing that national health care was a step toward socialism and advocating a series of alternative steps—including healthier eating and high-deductible insurance policies of the type that Whole Foods employees are offered. A Whole Foods spokeswoman told me that Mackey "participates in the same plan that is offered to all of our Whole Foods Market team members," which includes a "combination of high-deductible health insurance and a Personal Wellness Account." (Whole Foods pays the premium for full-timers' health insurance and puts up to $1,800 into the savings accounts.) In Mackey's case, what's good for the free-range goose is good for the free-range gander.

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The same can't be said for the legions of people you hear on television, or read in the op-ed pages, or chat with at weekend barbecues, raging about taxpayer-funded health care as an unworkable, inefficient, Orwellian evil.

This is a something of a Churchillian moment. Never before have so many known so little about so much. The meme that my Slate colleague Timothy Noah has been tracking about Medicare not being a government program has two sources: ignorance and mendacity. Some people may really not know that Medicare is taxpayer-funded health care. That's ignorance. Many more people know it—and know the degree to which taxpayers are already funding lots of health care for them and their loved ones—and argue otherwise. That's mendacity.

As we've noted before, if you add the failure of employer-linked health care with Medicare, Medicaid, government employment, and the military, a huge chunk of Americans already have taxpayer-funded health care. It's a diverse lot. Rich old people and poor kids, university professors, congressmen, teachers, DMV clerks and their families. Pretty much everybody you see on CNBC yelling about socialism? Their parents and grandparents (if they're still living) get taxpayer-funded health insurance. Mine do. Charles Grassley, the septuagenarian Iowan who is doing his darnedest to torpedo meaningful health care form, has it. Arthur Laffer, the 69-year-old economist who went on television and suggested that Medicare isn't a government health care program, is eligible for Medicare. Dick Armey, who spent many years teaching at a state university and served several terms in Congress, has had taxpayer-funded health insurance for much of his adult life. Same for Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich. Democratic senators like Max Baucus, Kent Conrad, and Ben Nelson? Yes, yes, and yes. Law professors at the University of Tennessee have it. The employees of George Mason University, which houses the free-market Mercatus Center, do, too. Policy analyst Betsy McCaughey, currently reprising her 1990s role of health care bamboozler, will be eligible for it in a few years' time.

Obvious? Yes. But it's still worth pointing out. All these people rely on—or have relied on—the government to pick up the tab for their health care and for their health insurance. And that hasn't caused euthanasia or the abolition of private property. Funny how you don't hear any complaints from worthies about taxpayer-funded health insurance when it's covering them, their staffs, and their loved ones. For many of these people, especially the older ones, there literally is no affordable alternative. Insurance companies prefer to insure healthy people, not sick people—that's how they make money. And older people are more likely to run into health trouble requiring expensive care. Dick Armey, who is suing to get out from under the tyranny of Medicare, is apparently under the illusion that insurance companies are really eager to cover 69-year-old men at a low cost. House Minority Leader John Boehner is a 59-year-old smoker whose skin has an orange hue. What do you think Aetna would charge him per month for a good policy?

After the stock-research scandals of the 1990s, analysts were required to disclose whether they or their families owned stock in the companies they were talking about. That has since emerged as a key gauge of credibility. I'd like to see something similar for the health care debate. Before they weigh in on the prospects for health care reform, interview subjects—pundits, talking heads, policy wonks, editors, members of Congress—would have to disclose whether they or their family members rely on taxpayer-funded health insurance.

Such a disclosure might eat into valuable airtime. But it would clarify the debate. We're witnessing a conversation between various people who are dependent on taxpayer-funded health insurance telling the public why tens of millions of people shouldn't have access to it. Most of the opponents of universal health care don't really think the public provision of health insurance services is immoral, evil, or socialistic—after all, they'd be at risk of bankruptcy without it. And most aren't opposed to deficit spending as a matter of principle. (How do they think we're paying for the Medicare prescription drug entitlement the Republicans rammed through a few years ago?) In effect, they believe that taxpayer-funded health insurance is appropriate and crucial for some people—themselves, their staffs, their parents—but not for others; that some are entitled to it, and that others simply aren't. In Washington, unlike at Whole Foods, they want us to believe that what's good for the goose will poison the gander.

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Daniel Gross is the Moneybox columnist for Slate and the business columnist for Newsweek. You can e-mail him at and follow him on Twitter. His latest book, Dumb Money: How Our Greatest Financial Minds Bankrupted the Nation, has just been published in paperback.

Photograph of Dick Armey by Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images for Meet the Press.

COMMENTS

OK, look. In discussing the crazies and ignoramuses who show up at these town hall meetings, a lot has been made of the beauty of the First Amendment. These people, many of them undoubtedly plants from the healthcare industry and the rightwing-nutcase machine, but many of them simply urged on by listening to Limbaugh, Beck and Hannity on radio and television or by friends and relatives who do, certainly are entitled to say what they want, however illogical or false in fact. But the rest of us are entitled to something in this debate, too: a public discussion dominated by facts.

It seems to me that Obama has an obligation to us to address the nation on primetime television and explain, at a minimum, three things: First, that Medicare is, entirely, a government-run program; the private health insurance companies play no role in it at all, except to offer voluntary supplemental insurance. And, second, that it was the private-sector banks, and private insurance company AIG, that engaged in the conduct that brought those business to the brink of collapse so that they needed a government bailout in order to stay afloat and avoid further collapsing the economy. The only role the government played in this, other than in bailing them out, was its failure to adequately regulate these industries.

And it is the banks and AIG, not the government, that has decided to use part of the bailout money to pay huge employee bonuses.

Which brings me to the third point. It is the private health insurance industry, not the government, that declines coverage for preexisting medical conditions, that imposes lifetime coverage caps, that charges exorbitant premiums to those who don't have health insurance through their employer and so purchase it on "direct pay" terms, and that raises premiums exponentially each year for employer-based coverage.

But Obama isn't going to do this. So, at least regarding the elderly who think Medicare is provided by private insurance companies, at a rate they can afford even though they are elderly and may have serious illnesses, I propose—and this is a serious proposal—that the Congress enact immediate legislation requiring the Medicare administration to send out a short printed statement to every current Medicare recipient explaining that Medicare is entirely a government-provided, government-run program, and that the statement require the recipient to acknowledge, by checking a box on the statement and returning it to the Medicare administration, that this is a government-run program.

The form also should include an option to opt out of Medicare coverage because it is a government-run program. The Medicare recipient will be required to sign the form, like income tax forms. A failure to return the form, check-marked and signed will operate to cancel Medicare coverage for that recipient.

Something very similar occurred in 1967, with the initiation of the Medicare program. Every elderly person who wanted to be part of the system had to fill out a form, sign it, and send it in order to receive coverage.

I'm so very tired of seeing public policy determined by palpably ignorant, appallingly manipulated people. Enough.

Truth be told, I suspect that much of the public shares that sentiment. I think the nutcase-shouting at these town halls reached the point a few days ago at which the law of diminishing returns is applying. How many people are still even paying attention to them? And how long will it take for the pols and pundits to realize that the number isn't what it was two weeks ago?

-- la savante
(To reply, click here)

Some say the way to improve health care is to give all Americans the same benefits their Senators and Congressmen/women receive. I have a different suggestion. Require all members of Congress to participate in the health care plan that is typical or most common among residents of their district. Let them pay $10-20,000/year in premiums even under employer-provided plans and see more and more of the health care costs shifted back to you in so-called "Explanations of [No] Benefits" through deductibles, co-pays, "your responsibility" etc. Maybe then they would begin to see a way to put the interest of their constituents ahead of those of the industries who fund their campaigns.

-- mgnat45
(To reply, click here)

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