(With apologies to readers of Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal.”)
I’m wondering if we don’t have this health care business backward. Isn’t the real problem those who insist on maintaining their sickness, their injuries, and their inability to meet the challenges of daily life?
How can “pre-existing conditions” be anything but a “red herring?” Does Rep. Mo Brooks, a Republican congressman from Alabama, feel this way? I don’t know, but I was heartened to read his recent comments:
“My understanding is that (the new proposal) will allow insurance companies to require people who have higher health-care costs to contribute more to the insurance pool. That helps offset all these costs, thereby reducing the cost to those people who lead good lives. They’re healthy; they’ve done the things to keep their bodies healthy. And right now, those are the people — who’ve done things the right way — that are seeing their costs skyrocketing.”
Is it necessary to say I admire Mr. Brooks’ view? It isn’t — how could I not? But it may be necessary to emphasize some nuances he overlooked. Take the emphasis on people “who’ve done things the right way.” I know about proper diet and exercise — we all do — but don’t tell me the buck stops there. If you develop a muscle-wasting disease, you’ve done something, at some time, that was wrong, so you, and you alone, need to fix it.
We need to focus on real solutions. And the right way to deal with this issue is this: Send people with “pre-existing conditions” to other parts of the world — South Sudan comes to mind — where they’ll almost certainly be in better health than those already there. (Is it fair to say that, in these circumstances, they are more likely to appreciate whatever good health they have? I think it is.)
What else will this accomplish, besides lowering the health care costs for those who play by the rules?
Well, our school expenses may be reduced since parents with pre-existent conditions will be less likely to have children, and some children whose needs are not covered will die, meaning class sizes will be a bit smaller. We have benefited from this kind of zero-sum equation before. Remember, when we relocated Japanese-Americans to concentration camps during World War II the cost of educating their children fell proportionately.
(For that matter, it’s likely that internment took a bite out of health-care expenses even if the overall costs of injuries in World War II sent them soaring.)
And there’s more reason for satisfaction. Assuming we “drain the swamp,” we will have heard the last of these maudlin lines from Emma Lazarus’ poem:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
If we want a brave new world, we have to be brave enough to say goodbye to the sickest among us. Forget the new analysis expected from the Congressional Budget Office. The fight is in the Senate now. It’s time to get started. It’s time to make America great again.