Health Reform: Is "What's In It For Me" All That Matters?

Why are we surprised when Americans look at Healthcare reform from “What’s in it for me?” We are cynical about helping more of the less fortunate with our taxes because we do not believe the programs which dispense welfare, health care (Medicaid), food stamps, subsidies, grants to the less fortunate are working as sold. We accepted the “greater good” argument in the past and we received an ever increasing tax burden on fewer people and now we are told the country is bankrupting itself trying to do good.
Our society has become self centered. Social networking web sites are recent evidences of self love and self preoccupation. The messages left on these pages are all about me. Most marketing for goods and services tries to answer the question “what’s in it for me? “ Politics is rife with appeals to self benefits. The politician who promises the most benefits gets the vote.
We accept doing the right things for groups of people who we identify with and believe in. Our churches, community schools, and civic organizations show us we can be generous and not just ask “what’s in it for me?” But our government and its politicians, for the most part, have lost our confidence in their ability to create and deliver programs which can really do good things for all citizens and non-citizens. So, we respond by asking, ”What’s in it for me? “

Who is John Galt?

Cathy,

About 100 years ago we socialized fire-fighting in the US. Before that, the local fire department would not save your home from burning unless you had purchased fire insurance or were prepared to shell out cash on the spot. Why did we, in effect, adopt universal fire coverage? Your uninsured neighbor’s burning house endangered your house.

Now, do you want to live near a family that can’t afford to treat their TB or H1N1? I didn’t think so. THAT is what is in for me.

Nikki's story is all too common and her fate is an outrage. It is a lesson for us all that just "covering" the uninsured isn't enough--people need comprehensive coverage. Bare bones plans just won't do.

What we really need to be asking ourselves is what is the true cost of our American greed. We have been told by conservatives and business leaders that government is bad and should have no role in the economic markets and that big industries will regulate themselves, but all we really have seen for the past 8 years is keep government out of our business and if we are not making a quick profit right now, than the dam with the rest of society and who cares about corporate responsibility. Our nation's unemployment is at 10% , a large percentage of the blue and white collar jobs have been sent overseas, bankruptcy and foreclosures are at a record setting pace, our deficits are in the trillions, our nation's roads and schools are falling apart. What’s in it for me is really a denial of our true nature of corruption, power, greed and evil that is entrenched from the lowest to the highest level of government and society. Individuals who are educated or have a social conscience with a sense of responsibility towards there fellow citizen and family members understand this is all wrong. The government is suppose to work for the people by the people, not just the top 5%. To allow a healthcare system that solely focuses to make huge profits undermines the greatest value we have, which is human life. It takes a true leader like President Obama to tell the American people what they don’t like to hear and is sometimes difficult to understand. The haters, conservatives and the left wing call the President a socialist, well is it not a fact that Medicare, Social security programs and our education systems have been around way before Barack Obama has. Social programs and good, efficient run government is it not always a bad thing, especially when an uninsured person cannot afford to hire a Washington lobbyist.

The thing that needs to change is the legality of going to the doctor. People need to assume some of the risks when they go in for an appointment, healthcare isn't perfect and things do go wrong. Whenever something goes wrong, the first response should not be "sue the doctor" or "sue the hospital", that just raises the costs of medical service and causes more paperwork. I'm for the libertarian approach to all this since I see that the majority of the cost is in legal protection and not being sued by the patients.

The "moral" argument is fairly tiresome, and "Joe Citizen" in the first part of his response explains why. Americans do strongly believe in helping out the less fortunate, and we already pay a good deal of taxes to fund a lot of "moraly" driven spending. And what that spending gets us is often outright fraud, and at the very least a bloated public sector. Add in the fact that the vast majority of Americans -even the wealthy ones- have taken a massive economic hit lately, and we have a strong case to be "selfish" with our tax dollars. We should focus first on reducing healthcare costs, and that may or may not include a "universal" plan. If that effort is successful, we can carefully select the best programs to help provide wider coverage. Americans are neither immoral, greedy or stupid. Hence, they are being fairly critical about massive healthcare legislation that has been hacked together in a matter of weeks. Thank goodness.

Yes, I think it is entirely appropriate to ask "What's in it for me?" when the government wants to take my money for some program. I think it is entirely inappropriate for anyone to characterize people like me as "selfish or greedy"! What you fail to do here is look at the questions behind the question.
For instance:
What benefit am I as a member of society going to get? Will providing (this service) do anything positive?
Is the program properly set up? Or is it half-baked as we have seen so many times over the years? What if it is not effective, is it flexible enough to change or be eliminated?
Is there oversight, or can the administrators loot the program leaving no funding for it's purpose?
Is it fair? Lately, many of the bills presented and passed reward those who have done the wrong thing in the past (buying cars with bad gas mileage, houses that are much, much more than they can afford or will ever need, extended credit to the breaking point), all at the expense of those of us who live responsibly.
These are just a few of the many questions we "selfish, greedy" people want asked before we throw away another billion or 10!
Let me try to "make it clear" (as Obama would say). When you go to buy a product, you don't ask the retailer what you can do for him, right? When you pay taxes, you are paying for a product. The difference is, if you are not properly represented, you have no choice in what you buy. You may want (and can afford) a new Cadillac, but your representative will take all your money and give you a used Yugo!
Right now, I don't think all of us are properly represented! Can you imagine going to your boss and saying you didn't have time to read a contract that will have a major impact (positive or negative depending on outcome) on the company, but think it should be signed?
Think about it.

We need to determine the space of the possible, and then choose how we want to live and who we want to help. I hope we will choose to be generous, but starting with the assumption that any amount of healthcare we hope to get is affordable for every American is foolish. The proposition that we should ration what capacity for healthcare there is equally to all according to their need is not likely to work any better than offering free bread.

That said, shouldn't we be focused on making sure that our health care market operates more like an actual free market? Once we have a working health care system, then we can examine what credits, subsidies, insurance, and charities can really do to improve access.
I imagine that high-deductible disaster insurance without disqualification allowed for pre-existing conditions ought to be workable. I believe we can do something (on an individual basis at least) to help out the poor who can't work, or who work but can't keep up with health care payments. We should not think that health care will cost the same for everyone, but that the costs will scale more according to health than wealth. If you want someone to blame for that, blame nature.

Whatever has become of the 2006 Citizens' Health Care Working Group findings and recommendations? Were they buried by those who did not want to hear them? Americans want health care access, availability, quality, fairness, and affordability for all, and an end to the very real risk of financial ruin based on arbitrarily unfortunate timing, abusive insurer technicalities, or incompetence born of grossly misguided cost squeezing. My seamless emergency surgery and hospitalization in Germany, at no cost to myself or my employer, with no burdensome paperwork or forms or bills for anyone, got me back at work in 3 weeks, while a colleague enduring the American system for injuries deemed essentially identical was still unable to return to work after 9 months of care. It is a beautiful demonstration of the benefits to the economy when government takes the side of overall system effectiveness on behalf of the population at large instead of taking the side of favored industry profits and feeding the frenzied battle for extorting the meager wealth of individuals and businesses. How many different ways do Americans have to tell "you", how many times do we have to say, that the horribly ineffective, fragmented system that we are forced to endure today is not acceptable. You are our democratically elected representatives, the leaders of our public corporations, our doctors who have lost control, and sometimes you are the media, refusing to give voice to the Americans on the receiving end. To imply that it is somehow charitable to have a health care system that works and stops racing toward an economy that does nothing but tend to one another's health matters is to miss the point of this whole debate entirely. Thank you for allowing my voice.

These are all well-intended wishes, but I think the American people have been misguided in regards to reality. This is a simple economic issue that can be explained by determining the cause-and-effect relationship of the incentives put in place. Our health care costs are bloated because of a disconnect between usage and payment of the product. A person who does not bear the cost of healthcare has less incentive to be consumer conscience than a person who does bear the cost. Consumerism-common in nearly every other product, i.e. computers, food, TV, houses-makes the retailer compete against other retailers to win the business of the customer. This competition forces companies to provide a better product or else they will lose money and go out of business. Unfortunately, the government does not face this threat, because it can continue to operate a poorly run organization simply by raising taxes or issuing more debt. The point being-competition forces improvements, not well-intended statements made by government or even the majority of a state. I don't like analogies because they blur the reality of the actual subject at hand, but how much improvement do you think we would have seen in the Olympic 100 meter dash (or any other event) if the government mandated that the race be run under 10 seconds, instead of allowing competition to be the incentive? It's just plain reality, and no matter how much you want everyone to have healthcare, it will never happen, just as not everyone will have food to eat, or a house to live in. We live in a world of scarce resources and unlimited wants. If you want to be a philanthropist, that is a personal choice. But do not take my hard-earned money and blow it on fairy-tale fantasies. The best custodian of my resources is me, not the government. History has shown us that socialism does not work.