banktime.com

There has been much talk about the Obama administration’s proposal to get every American covered by some sort of health insurance. But there is a competing opinion, one that says that Americans who are poor could be hurt by making healthcare mandatory and changing the entire way that insurance coverage is administered in this nation. I recently read a very compelling editorial by Robert Hardaway, professor of law at the University of Denver and the author of seventeen books on law and public policy. Unlike so many intellectuals, he’s not in favor of the Obama health insurance plan.

Hardaway points to the provision, buried in two thousand pages of health care reform bill legalese, cutting expenditures on county hospitals for programs serving the poor. That’s in addition to the unpopular cutbacks to Medicare contained within the voluminous legislation that have gotten quite a bit more public attention. Hardaway argues that these changes could ultimately prove disastrous to county hospitals where the uninsured poor can currently receive treatment regardless of their ability to pay for care. He cites the big city of Chicago Illinois, where many county hospitals might have to close their doors in the event of the healthcare “reform” bill being passed, or be forced to stop treating those who cannot prove that they have health insurance to pay for their treatment.

Hardaway says that there is a great deal of misunderstanding about the bill and what exactly it would do. He says that the legislation from both the House and Senate has been depicted in the popular point of view as “using coercive means to require those currently uninsured to buy insurance they cannot afford, or as imposing additional new taxes on the American working man and family.” But that assumption, he claims, is based on a misunderstanding of how the nation’s poorest sick people currently receive care for themselves in times of illness. Many of the unemployed or underemployed poor, he says, simply cannot be expected to cope with the myriad complications involved in the administration of health insurance: varying programs, copays, deductibles, et cetera. What they do now, which is seeking treatment at county hospitals, gives them a place to get medical assistance without being drowned in a sea of red tape. It’s simple and easy, two things that are desperately needed by this population. Should either of the bills be passed, these simple and easy treatment options might be lost.

Hardaway scoffs at the notion that the government should require everyone to buy health insurance, most of which they will never use. Single men would end up carrying maternity coverage, and those who have never been depressed a day in their lives would have to carry expensive mental health coverage. It’s like requiring everyone to buy a Rolls Royce limo when a Ford car would do just as well, he says. If people can’t afford the Rolls, to continue the metaphor, then they cannot have any car at all. Ultimately, Hardaway concludes, these proposals are well-meaning but misguided.