We're Paying Already

As the health care drum beats continue, one of the most prevalent complaints from Democrats is that we can't have public health insurance because it's too expensive. There's a problem there of course, and that's that we're already paying. It's not like all the uninsured people just die as soon as they get sick, they avail themselves of the finest healthcare in the world, and we all pay for it. The difference is that we don't see all the money in one place. It gets spread out in smaller amounts all over the place, so it seems like it's not there. But without a doubt it very truly is.

Of course the first way we pay for this is in higher health care costs. If everyone had a way to pay for the services they got, then across the board costs could be lower. Since many people don't have insurance but still get treatment, some of those costs are left in the laps of health care providers and they make it up by billing us all more - for everything.

Often the costs not borne by the provider themselves are passed on to Medicaid. While the federal government provides support for Medicaid it is largely a distributed program, with much of the burden falling on state governments. States in turn close that funding gap by raising our state income taxes, or increasing fees, or raising sales taxes. If you don't think you are already paying taxes for other people's health care - beyond what we all pay for Medicare - you're fairly naive. Health care expenses are a significant and ever escalating part of state budgets that we all subsidize currently.

You also pay for health care any time you buy anything or pay for pretty much any service. Since employer provided health insurance is the standard operating procedure in this country businesses must recover the cost of that outlay from their customers. Each time you buy pretty much anything some portion of your payment goes to cover the health insurance of the person that made the thing or provides the service. Wouldn't it just make more sense for each of us to deal with our own insurance rather than give our money to a business so they can pay an insurance premium for someone else? Beyond that, many employers have negotiated health insurance for retirees into labor contracts, both for union agreements and for people negotiating independently. So not only does part of your payment go to the insurance of the person that currently works on the product, but some of it goes to pay for the insurance of all the people that used to make the thing but have retired. With the aging of the population that sort of arrangement is a formula for disaster.

And then going back to the employer again, we pay for insurance through lower wages. If our employers didn't have to provide health insurance for us the money they pay for insurance could come to employees as wages. With the cost of insurance outpacing inflation I think it's fairly certain that cost of living raises have taken a hit to pay for accelerated insurance premiums (and that's without considering the shriking of scope of service many of us have seen from the employer provided health insurance as well).

• Lower Wages
• Higher Consumer Prices
• Higher Taxes and Government Fees
• Higher Healthcare costs

It very well may be too expensive, and we should do something about it, but it isn't any more expensive than the people are paying right now. We'd just be able to see it.