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Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review March 2, 2007 / 12 Adar, 5767

Uninsured Are Under Siege

By Drs. Michael A. Glueck & Robert J. Cihak

The Medicine Men
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | We uninsured Americans gotta stick together.


Socialists, who want the government to force us to buy their idea of health insurance or to "cover" us with government-provided insurance, are attacking us.


California Gov. Schwarzenegger, Massachusetts Gov. Patrick, and others who worry about a "hidden tax" that we inflict on the insured are also attacking us.


Then there are those who want to force us to buy health insurance.


We're being attacked from all sides.


Before I get into more details, remember that health "insurance" is not the same as actually getting medical needs met.


Having health insurance is often very different from actually getting medical problems evaluated and treated quickly and appropriately.


Centralized or socialized health services always seem to end up delaying medical care for serious conditions or expensive treatment, such as cancer and joint replacements. The Soviet Union, England, Canada, and many other countries did not or do not fulfill supposedly guaranteed rights to timely medical services, resulting in unnecessary suffering and premature deaths.


Some of our uninsured brethren don't pay their bills for hospital emergency room services, forcing hospitals and doctors to make up the difference by overcharging those who can pay, such as people with insurance or uninsured people with money.


John R. Graham of the Pacific Research Institute based in San Francisco writes, "To back up this notion, Families USA, a self-styled consumer advocacy group, estimates that the uninsured used about $29 billion worth of health services in 2005 that the privately insured paid for through higher premiums." He recently published "The Uninsured Versus The Insured: Who Subsidizes Whom?" (Go to www.pacificresearch.org/pub/hpp/2007/HPPv5n2_0207.pdf.)


There's more to the story. Graham calculates that "the uninsured likely pay at least $150 billion extra in federal income taxes alone, by forgoing the tax savings associated with private health insurance." These dollars - five times the purported hidden tax - "dwarf the hidden tax of uninsurance."


In terms of taxes paid, we uninsured are actually subsidizing the insured rather than the other way around. The insured are the ones getting the income tax break, not us uninsureds.


Graham claims there is indeed a real hidden tax, "but it is levied by the insured on their fellow insured. Because of bad incentives, insured Americans use health services twice as much, per person, as the uninsured."


Some politicians want to force us uninsured to get some kind of insurance so that they can claim that they have solved our "problem" of not having (or not wanting) health insurance. Graham notes, "political success in health policy now consists, basically, of ordering the uninsured to become insured."


We doubt that any such mandate will be any more effective than the laws in 47 states that require drivers to buy liability auto insurance. As Greg Scandlen, president of Consumers for Health Care Choices based in Hagerstown, Md., reports in the Baltimore Sun, "the notion that a legislature can wave a magic wand and change everyone's behavior is naive at best."


Although my own Washington state requires automobile owners and drivers to have auto liability insurance, about 18 percent of motorists do not. Even though health insurance isn't mandated, 16 percent of the Washington population has coverage, according to Scandlen. And speaking of mandates, most states have laws to force insurance companies to include pet coverages in health insurance policies.


Although politicians often try to claim these mandates "protect the public" or are "good for you," mandates invariably reflect the medical and financial interests of pressure groups.


If mandates did protect the public at the expense of special interest groups, those groups would campaign against them. Special interest groups, such as general medical or limited practitioners, back proposed mandates, not the other way around, to enhance their own power, income or both.


I am uninsured because health insurance is unhealthy for me. After diligently studying and promoting medical savings account (MSA) plans 10 years ago, I bought a policy from Anthem Health of New Jersey for my college-age son and myself.


To make the long story short, the insurance proposal of dozens of pages had a $2,000 individual deductible; but the 100-page insurance policy actually issued had a $4,000 deductible, causing a great deal of correspondence and dismay when medical services were actually used.


I canceled that policy early in 1998.


I've been living uninsured and more happily ever since, until the Social Security bureaucrats foisted Medicare Part A on me.


I could swear off Medicare Part A but the ever-so-wise Social Security Administration would then stop sending Social Security checks. Medicare Part A currently "covers" me for hospital services. I have sworn off Medicare Part B and D. (Don't ask me what Part C is.)


Health insurance can be a valuable financial planning tool. Some families have other priorities for the use of their resources, such as spending on care for their parents or educating their children or making car payments so they can get to work. Politicians and others should respect and not usurp these decisions, no matter how good their intentions might be.


Insurance itself is not the goal; the goal is appropriate, timely and efficient care of medical needs, as judged by real patients and their families, not politicians or medical insurance bureaucrats.


Editor's Note: Robert J. Cihak wrote this week's column painlessly.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

Michael Arnold Glueck, M.D., is a multiple award winning writer who comments on medical-legal issues. Robert J. Cihak, M.D., is a Discovery Institute Senior Fellow and a past president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. Both JWR contributors are Harvard trained diagnostic radiologists. Comment by clicking here.

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