AS LONG AS YOU’RE PAYING, I’LL HAVE THE LOBSTER!

8/24/11

While mowing my lawn this morning and listening to WBBM Newsradio 78, I was treated to a seemingly mournful report from the Commonwealth Foundation that some people had (Horrors!) skipped an appointment with a doctor or stopped using a prescription drug because they had lost their jobs, and the health insurance that, under our goofy system, goes with it and couldn’t afford the insurance afforded them by the COBRA law. The Commonwealth Foundation’s preferred, indeed, demanded, response to these travails was to continue the subsidy for COBRA that was formerly provided as part of the Bush/Obama administration’s stimulus package.

We are, of course, supposed to wail and gnash our teeth that people are missing doctor’s appointments and/or not taking medication and call our congresspersons demand that subsidization of COBRA be immediately reinstated, perhaps when we are taking a break from demanding that “entitlements be reigned in.” (See one of today’s other posts, I’M ENTITLED TO MY ENTITLEMENTS.) But clear thinking people with even a rudimentary understanding of economics (I know, I know…only about 300 or so people in this country.) are applauding most of the instances in which people are finally missing doctor’s appointments and not taking their medication. Perhaps we are starting to dispense with the billions upon billions of dollars of unnecessary “health care” spending that takes place in this country every year.

How dare I say that so much of our “health care” spending is unnecessary when I have NO medical background? Simply because I understand economics and human nature, which are, after all, the same thing. So much health care spending is unnecessary because people feel free to dispense with it when they have to pay for it themselves. They will take it, or even “demand” it as “vital” when someone else (the insurance company, their employer, the government) is paying for it, but suddenly can do without that doctor visit or that prescription when they must pay for it, and give up, say a meal at a fancy restaurant, yet another flat screen TV, or a few weeks of Starbuck’s, in order to go for this all-important examination or some “life saving” or “life enhancing” drug.

The reason that health care is so expensive is not because doctors or hospitals or nurses are overpaid, which seems to be the underlying assumption behind the Bush/Obama administration’s all purpose solution to every budget/health care spending problem: stiff the health care providers. Health care is so expensive because those who consume it are not the same people as those who pay for it. When anything is free, or near free, demand is infinite, or near infinite. It is, therefore, heartening to see people who use “health care” services have a little skin in the game. They, and we, will doubtless spend our “health care” dollars more wisely when more of them are indeed our dollars.