#1079 Ant-i-Healthy

Another bugaboo thrown out by those who favor the status quo, is that Health Care reform will be socialized medicine. I don’t know, does government involvement necessarily mean socialism? Anymore than the interstate highway system is socialized roads, or the Center for Disease Control, the highly respected CDC, is socialized science?
Some of the interesting features of the status quo, by the way, are that the US has higher infant mortality than Europe and an immunization rate worse than Botswana’s. As a nation, we currently spend more on health care than anywhere else, and yet we’re unhealthier.
How did we get there?
Ants.
We acted like ants. Ever seen an ant trail in the early stages? Ants don’t go from their nest directly to the food—from point A to point B. They wander. Forager ants meander this way and that until they finally end up at the food. Others follow the scent left by the first ants until eventually there’s a path to the food, but it’s pretty crooked and inefficient. There may be places along the way that are hazardous and a few ants in the nest die, but most of the ants back at the nest get fed. The ant trail improves incrementally as some ants take shortcuts and the trail gets marginally straighter. But it takes a long time to happen.
Now a smart observer looking at the ant trail would see the straight way from point A to B, and solve the problem quickly. Here’s why our ant trail healthcare system needs such an outsider.
A poor person has no insurance—say he lost his job or doesn’t work for the government or a union, or a high-paying job like congress, where they subsidize his insurance. He needs medical care so he goes to the emergency room—the most expensive care there is. The hospital can’t get any money from him, so they raise the prices they charge to everybody else. The insurance companies, who pay the prices, raise their rates to pay for the increased costs, and maybe add in an extra buck or two of profit—hey, they’re insurance companies. The unions and employers pass on those costs to workers and employees. If you work for the government, they pass on the costs to guess who? You the taxpayer.
So we already have taxpayer-supported health care, it’s just as inefficient as an ant trail.
Is it possible to take a wider perspective and save money? And maybe get our infant mortality rate down while we’re at it?
Or should we keep acting like mindless ants?
America, ya gotta love it.