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The Nation's Pulse
Government in Vermont
Gov. Shumlin makes a shaky case for healthcare as a right.
On Wednesday, April 27, new Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin, a Democrat, was interviewed on a national radio program about a bill on healthcare that the Governor will soon sign. (Let me add that he testified on April 14 at a hearing on State and Municipal Debt held by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in which he appeared on a panel with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.)
For my present purposes, the content and the particulars of the Vermont healthcare bill is irrelevant. What is relevant are the three goals that the Governor said he and the legislature expect to achieve with this bill. Two of the three are at odds with the philosophy of American government, but not with the philosophy of government held by Democrats. This is what he said about the goals:
… we’re trying to do three things. The first is [to] have the first health care system in the country where health care is a right and not a privilege. The second is to ensure that we have a system where health insurance follows the individual and isn’t required by the employer…
And the third part — perhaps the most important — is to contain cost, to design a cost containment system where we’re spending our health care dollars not on insurance company profits, not on waste, not on [in]efficiency in what I call the non-system, but on delivering health care to Vermonters.
* * *
Our big challenge… is getting the waste in the system, the profit, the folks who are making money off our misery out of the system, and spending our health care dollars, making Vermonters better.
Let’s take each of these goals in turn.
Right, Not a Privilege
It used to be that, when Americans spoke of rights held by the
people, it was a right to act, or say, without interference from
the government. As our Declaration of Independence proclaims, these
rights come not from the government, but from the hand of God. And
they are inalienable, that is, they can neither be taken nor given
away.
But when Governor Shumlin speaks of healthcare as a right he is not speaking of preventing the government from creating any government-created obstacle between the people’s ability to access and pay for healthcare. Rather, he is speaking of the people’s rights to obtain goods and services from the hand of the government. Of course, the government does not possess any goods and services except through its ability to tax individuals (or associations of individuals, such as businesses) to pay for them or its ability to commandeer (that is, mandate) them.
If we should dare to grant such a right, upon what principled basis is government limited in establishing such rights? Might such rights extend to food, shelter, jobs, job training, education, energy, personal computers, some of which used to fall under what the law called “necessaries”?
Following the Individual, Not
Employer
On the merits of this aspect of
the bill, in principle there is much to commend a system where an
individual is not reliant on his or her employer for health
insurance. Government officials, however, should
address such a change with humility since it was the government
which, trying to do good, created this dependency at the end of
World War II. I would note an analogous situation. Many advocate
providing subsidies for nontraditional energy sources (geothermal,
wind, solar, wave). For how long? They do not appreciate the irony
in seeking these subsidies while seeking to revoke the
hundred-year-old subsidies for the petroleum industry.
In any event, this goal of Governor Shumlin and the Vermont legislature is consistent with the philosophy of American government since it seeks to eliminate an obstacle to individual freedom created by the government.
Eliminating Waste; Removing Profit Obtained from
Others’ Misery
First, it is simply not
true that substituting government for private sector eliminates
waste. The government has its own fraud, waste, and abuse. In the
same radio program, Michael Cannon, Director of Health Policy
Studies at the Cato Institute, stated that Medicare’s waste, fraud
and abuse amounts to $48 billion per year, four times the combined
profit of private health insurance companies.
Second, if the Governor and the Vermont legislature want to remove profit obtained from others’ misery, clearly doctors’ and hospitals’ and laboratories’ and medical device manufacturers’ and pharmaceutical companies’ income must be included.
But why stop at the system of the delivery of healthcare goods and services? Consider the people who profit off of other people’s hunger and daily need for food lest they starve: farmers and fishermen, silo cooperatives, canneries, food manufacturers, grocery stores. So much inefficiency! So much waste! So much profit! Surely our government can do it better. It is unlawful for our citizens to steal food from the grocery shelves. But our citizens can get around that by having our government take it and give it to them.
The philosophy of American government may be able to justify the particulars of the Vermont bill on healthcare — I would need to study the particulars — but Governor Shumlin’s philosophy of government does not qualify.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (50) | Leave a comment
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Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 4.29.11 @ 6:17AM
Very soon it will not matter how hard you work, but how hard politicians think about new plans to take care of you.
When the public buys into that, it's all over. No one will work any more, not because they are lazy, but why try?
I saw a bumper sticker which stated it clearly, "Work Hard, Millions on Welfare Depend on You."
Michael Tomlinson| 4.29.11 @ 6:45AM
Bill it is unfortunate the bumper sticker is so true.
JimH| 4.29.11 @ 8:21AM
Not just those on welfare. In many boardrooms as well.
RCV| 4.29.11 @ 8:27PM
"Work Hard. The oil companies and agribusinesses need your subsidies."
The Bruce| 4.30.11 @ 1:57AM
And thank God both Republicans and Democrats are seriously considering eliminating these subsidies.
Chalkdust| 4.29.11 @ 7:45AM
What happened to the "crusty" old Vermont dairy farmer who was famous for being self-reliant? The next thing you know they'll be saying a sex-change operation is a "right" and I'm not talking about milk cows. Maybe these farmers were put to sleep by federal milk subsidies brought home by one of their bright legal scholars they so thoughtfully sent to Washington to help all of us develop our own socialist state.
I say a pox on their ski slopes, they deserve what they vote for.
c. j. acworth| 4.29.11 @ 5:12PM
They voted for Bernie Sanders, that tells you all you need to know.
RCV| 4.29.11 @ 8:28PM
The crusty old Vermont dairy farmers are Ben and Jerry.
Intelligent Design| 4.29.11 @ 8:13AM
It's appropriate to keep in mind that VT has a population of about 630,000. Its politicians have very shallow and largely irrelevant experience. For example, the minority population is about 1.5%. Howard Dean was the mayor of Vermont before running for president, and becoming DNC chair.
Tenn Slim| 4.29.11 @ 9:58AM
Spot on.
Vermont living is hardly a showcase for Socialism. They Leftist know the Vermonters would have thier ears for lunch if they seriously invaded the state.
Vermonter have a double tradition. Freedom at any cost, IE Independence, but of late, have accepted the largesse of such as B. Sanders, and the like.
end
erp| 4.29.11 @ 10:15AM
Sorry, but you don't know much about Vermont. It's known as Appalachia North and probably the most leftist state in the union. The crusty old Vermonter lives only on the pages of Vermont Life Calendars.
Grzmlyk| 4.29.11 @ 12:22PM
Tenn Slim, I live in Vermont.
It is a wannabe Marxist state. It is Moscow on the Lake (Champlain). I have to keep my conservatism under wraps lest my coworkers and peers ostracize me; when I voiced my opposition to Obama to a couple of colleagues in 2008, I was very nearly lynched by the Brown Shirts from the Ministry of Tolerance.
It's home to senator Patrick Leahy, a pure Marxist demagogue if ever there was one. It's home to Bernie Sanders, the only avowed socialist in the Senate. Need I remind you that the execrable Howard Dean used to be our governor? You don't get further left than that (well, ok, Obama is further left). The state capital, Montpelier, boasts more lawyers per capita than any other part of this country.
You're thinking of the old "Currier & Ives" concept of the hard-scrabble, self-reliant Vermonter. Sorry, mate, that only exists on old calendars and in the memories of old people who have been herded into state-run hospices and old age homes.
Vermont has some of the highest taxes in the country, and is openly hostile to businesses that aren't propped up by federal subsidies. It detests its rich history as a monolithic home to white, protestant, hardworking people. Instead, for over a decade, it has tried to put as many people on the dole as possible while luring refugees here from every third world country on the map - provided they are "people of color" and come with federal payola attached of course.
Vermont is at the forefront of gay marriage, the home of Ben and Jerry and a safe harbor for miscreants, malcontents and perpetual children.
Please - Vermont's taxes are through the roof, and you can't swing a dead cat around here without hitting some counter-cultural, hacky-sack fiddling throwback to the days of the hippies or else a middle-class professional slouch panhandling to support his or her Iphone habit. It's nothing but green energy this and wind and solar that, and our only Nuclear power plant is in danger of being retrofitted to run on pixie dust and unicorn smiles.
The Vermont you describe has long since gone the way of knights in shining armor.
Occam's Tool| 4.29.11 @ 1:25PM
Yes, G, but you exist; a shining beacon of excellence in a land of Liberal Mendacity and Mediocrity. Good post.
Grzmlyk| 4.29.11 @ 1:50PM
Thank you MUCHO, Occam.
Sadly, I literally have met no other conservatives (I've lived here about a decade) - except, oddly, my sister's "lifestyle partner," a lesbian who has seen the light.
Otherwise, it's Praise Mother Earth, pass the Kool-Aid and hold your hand out for manna from Washington!
Too Many Tims| 4.29.11 @ 2:07PM
You left out Burlington Telecom...
RCV| 4.29.11 @ 8:29PM
Why do you continue to live there?
Negro X| 5.1.11 @ 6:49PM
RCV,
Why do you post here?
Sid Vicious| 5.2.11 @ 6:21PM
If Hydro-Quebec ever decided to pull the plug on those two dozen terawatt-hours of excess generating capacity it sends to the south every year, the People's Progressive Socialist Democratic Republic of Vermont couldn't serve three out of every 10 electricity customers even with that nuke plant going full blast. Without either Vermont Yankee or Hydro-Quebec, Vermont would be where West Virginia was before rural electrification.
Thanks, I think, for that tiny glimpse of hell, G.
The Bruce| 4.30.11 @ 1:59AM
I think you're confusing Vermont for New Hampshire, Slim.
DA MONK| 4.29.11 @ 11:08AM
Intelligent (?) Design: You are showing your ignorance, Howard Dean was governor not mayor of Vermont.
buckeyeman| 4.29.11 @ 11:22AM
I think you missed the quite obiously intentional sarcasm.
Denver Todd| 4.29.11 @ 8:33AM
I would like it if my health insurance was purchased directly instead of through my employer. Then I would quit my job.
Dagny Taggert| 4.29.11 @ 9:01AM
My BCBS insurance goes up 22% starting Monday. How can that possibly be? They are a non-profit. These snake-oil salesman politicians need to stop carping about "insurance industry profits" being the source of the problem. The left gets away with sound-bite rhetoric riling up the masses who don't read beyond the headlines. I hope this is one example that might be simple enough for their followers to see how empty their BS analysis is.
Grzmlyk| 4.29.11 @ 11:47AM
Not only that, but I love how politicians pretend they're going to take the profit and the fat out of health care budgets.
Hardy har har.
First of all, for every dollar that gets sucked into the Big Government maw, approximately 70 cents goes toward the bureaucracy; ony 30 cents goes to the ostensible recipient.
But how can you expect anything else when you've got administrative assistants making $300,000 a year.
And it's the insurance companies who are corrupt and greedy?
Doesn't matter - the great brainwashed masses - those who aren't on the take, as VTWIN is, believe that government is automatically GOOD and NOBLE and BENEFICENT and EFFICIENT, and anything emanating from the private sector is BAD, GREEDY, SELFISH and WASTEFUL.
It is the other way around, because, when you're spending other people's money, you don't care how much something costs. When it's your own, you tend to be frugal.
But there I go again, uttering facts. Facts don't matter in the cloud cukoo land of liberalism.
Just ask Vtwin the rapist.
The Bruce| 4.30.11 @ 2:01AM
Grzmlyk, I think you're being too kind to government. I figure they're take is closer to 85%.
Liz| 5.3.11 @ 11:39AM
...government is automatically GOOD...
But that is only true when the government is telling them that it is good (ie. now) versus when a conservative basically tells them to get off their cans and get a job because the gravy train is over and all of a sudden the liberals are saying how horrible the government is. I just cannot stand the hippocracy anymore!!!
Anthony M| 4.29.11 @ 9:28AM
Unfortunately, there is a problem with the healthcare delivery system in the USA. Our present extremely expensive private system, although it provides great care, will soon swallow up way more than we can afford. All the tea parties and rhetoric in the world can't change the fact that health insurance costs are getting out of control. Standing back and doing nothing will not solve the problem.
squalis| 4.29.11 @ 9:49AM
Gee, I don't know about that. Didn't EJ Dionne tell us we have plenty of money?
Groad| 4.29.11 @ 9:29AM
Another statist Socialist who figures right are conferred on the serfs by the state or oligarchy in charge.
Tenn Slim| 4.29.11 @ 9:55AM
Understand clearly, Vermonters live by a double standard.
1. Their old time Yanke Tradition of Independence, freedom to do, say, and work as they deem fit. Oddly, this is not, in thier minds, at odds with the actuality of State run Agencies, NGOs, and such that control some $ 2 BILLION dollars worth of assets.
2. These folks actually belive in Socialism. Thier Ex Mayor of Burlington regularly espouses Vermontal Style Socialism on the Senate floor. Vermonters want and expect, aid from the cradle to the grave. In their State run agencies they get this, paid for by the highest taxation sructure in New England.
Given that, if the National economy turns sour, Depression really hits, expect Vermont to sever ties with the US and if possible sail back to England.
end
Petronius| 4.29.11 @ 10:33AM
No. Let's just cede everything east of the Hudson to New Brunswick. Except for Boston and Newport, the rest of New England will never know the difference.
RichTex| 4.29.11 @ 10:39AM
If health care is a “right” to be furnished by the government, then clearly that government cannot ration its availability. Vermonters should get ready to pay for any and all medical procedures anyone in the country (or the world) needs or believes that they need and who makes their way to their small corner of the universe. No death panels in Vermont because they would violate someone’s “rights”.
cicero| 4.29.11 @ 11:40AM
Government should take over the health care system so that it can cut out fraud, and make affordable health care for all? Is he serious? If the government were put in charge of the Sahara desert, it would run out of sand in about 3 years, and not be able to account for the loss.
The reason health care insurance is so expensive is because health care is so expensive. The reason health care is so expensive is because the government has agreed to pay for it, rather than impose the cost on the user.
Cicero's law of economics: " Debt expands to meet the money allotted to it". If the government agrees to pay the docs $150.00 for a visit, they will charge $150.00 per visit. If the government were not in the picture, the docs wouldd take whatever the patient could afford.
Franco| 4.29.11 @ 12:31PM
No. The reason health care is so expensive is because there's (duh) so much demand for it by a dumbass, myopic populace who choose to eat crap, refuse to exercise or otherwise take any responsibility for their own health--and THEN demand that they get the top-quality care.
Liz| 5.3.11 @ 11:51AM
Both of you are right to a certain extent. But my biggest issue is with people that go to the doctor or the emergency room at the drop of a hat! Come on. How did the citizens of this country survive all of these years in the wilderness without doctors and hospitals?
Gordon W.| 4.29.11 @ 11:50AM
I love the rants against socialism here. As if it is an insult to many in Vermont. Berny Sanders considers him self a socialist. Many people in the state believe democratic socialism is a feasible and admirable goal.
What you are trying to to do, is impart your beliefs on Vermont. If Vermont wants to have a single payer health care system like Massachesets has they can go for it. If it works it is just another water mark declaring it can work. If it doesn't it will go the other way.
The fact you are against another constituency, in another jurisdiction using their constitutional right to experiment with laws and regulations is pathetic. Before attaching Vermont trying to implement their socialist agenda, you should go after the Veteran Affairs health care system.
From the article I get the impression that any benefit I receive from government action is an action of stealing from others who do not benefit, but contributed to the government action. Well that position is border line anarchist, but it is a point of view.
The Bruce| 4.30.11 @ 2:11AM
I agree with you. If a State want do go down the road of socialized medicine, let them. If they can't learn from other failed experiments (Hawaii was bankrupt in 7 months, and Romnicare costs are through the roof), them let them try and fail.
And I agree with the Veterans Administration. It's a government system designed to feed administrators over getting care to it's patients. The VA even recently did a study on this... the study concluded that if they fired every one of their staff, and automatically raised every recipient's disability rating to 100%, the VA would actually cost far less than it costs now.
Larry| 5.2.11 @ 2:56PM
I'm more than willing to let Vermont go bankrupt, if you will promise me, Gordon W, that you won't ask the rest of us to bail you out when it happens. In the meantime, let me trek up to Vermont to get my "free" health care sometime (sarcasm).
Liz| 5.3.11 @ 11:54AM
But we all benefit from the military and constitutionally, that is something that the federal government is allowed to do.
George S| 4.29.11 @ 11:56AM
Another politician who thinks he can defy the laws of economics. Never mind that government control of health care -- or anything else for that matter -- has ever resulted in capital being efficiently allocated rather than politically directed, for this time it will be different. To them, all previous failures lay at the feet of not so smart people; "I, on the other hand, am smarter. I will make it work." This continuing fallacy always seems to get traction because people want to believe they'll get something for free. All a politician has to do is promise it and it will find its way into existence. When we realize that government control of health care is a death sentence it will be too late. But cheer up, when that happens Democrats will have successfully put the blame on the nearest Republican.
PCP Smoker| 4.29.11 @ 10:28PM
Massachusetts did this under Romney. Same old promises, same old rhetoric, and in the end, the same old results (waiting lines, shortages, and inflating costs). The good things are that (1) this governor is not a Repubican, (2) The american idiots have gotten over their fascination with government run healthcare, and (3) whatever happens in Vermont is inconsequential to anyone else.
Larry| 5.2.11 @ 2:53PM
I would heartily agree with your post, but with respect to item (3), we have an idiot business reporter down here in Dallas/Fort Worth who has highly praised Vermont for its initiative and would like to see Texas take similar initiatives. The newspaper is a Democratic-controlled newspaper, of course, but there are still enough idiot Democrats here that people may actually like what he said.
Dee See| 4.29.11 @ 11:11PM
---Putting aside for a moment the FACT that
virtually our entire medical establishment is
dominated and directed by unrepentant, third
generation EUGENISTS (Rockefeller Foundation et al)
----can anyone explain WHY
a country that has charged almost 8 bucks
for cigarettes and dollars in taxes on drinks
---has NO money for basic healthcare?
Appleby| 4.30.11 @ 8:29AM
Didnt we have a Civil War that addressed the idea of whether one had the right to force another man to provide something for one that one could not provide for oneself?
Do you want to be operated on by a surgeon who is performing his job at gunpoint?
ROWDY BOOTS| 4.30.11 @ 9:59AM
HEALTHCARE A RIGHT?
I want my tax money back!
I did not volunteer for the Maxist Policies of this Government.
AMERICA, WAKE UP--NEXT IT WILL BE A RIGHT TO HAVE A CAR, A T.V., A PHONE...
WHY BOTHER TO EARN ANYTHING?
Glein| 4.30.11 @ 11:43AM
I want the right have Vermont walled off before the disease they have in that state spreads.
Larry| 5.2.11 @ 2:49PM
Well, I think it funny that at least one troll from Vermont wants to defend the dunderhead who is governor there for proposing Obamacare Lite up there. Well, Massachusetts is struggling with its health care initiative, and is praying Obamacare will bail them out before the state goes bankrupt. I predict that if Vermont actually implements this plan, they will go bankrupt in 5 - 10 years. You haven't seen fraud until you've seen what is going to happen up there. I suspect there will be a lot of folks who will start spending time up in Vermont just to take "the cure" and will get their share of the "free" health care without really paying for it. And that is only the half of the costs that will be incurred.
Creative Recreation | 8.10.11 @ 9:38PM
is good