Health Insurance: Want Fries With That?

THE HEALTHCARE DEBATE is everywhere, but it has become increasingly confusing. Trillions of dollars. More taxes on the rich. Increased employer taxes. Health-providers promising cost cutting. The result: health care that is timely, superb, and free.

I'm not buying it. The same guys who run the Post Office now want to run healthcare. Government runs only one thing well -- the military -- and no one on earth believes they do so efficiently. Remember $40 screwdrivers?

So what is the solution? Make the evil rich pay? Okay, let's say we do. But evil rich people know how how to read the bottom line, and when something costs more than it's worth, they will stop paying for it and start living off clipping bond coupons. So there will be fewer evil rich to tax, not to mention the fact that the rest of us will be out of work because the evil rich guy will close his factory. If anything, we should lower his taxes. "If you tax something, you get less of it." Fact: tax revenues exploded under Kennedy and Reagan, when rates were lowered.

What about cost-cutting in the medical industry? Sure, let's do that. In a competitive economy, there is always an incentive to cut costs, but what do you think will happen when the government horns in? Does anyone compete with Medicare? Government-run health care ("single payor") quickly runs everyone else out of the business. So be careful when you pit the government against private enterprise, while hamstringing private enterprise with endless rules, regulations, and taxes. Government will win and private enterprise will lose. And so will you, because choice is the key to competition. No choice, no competition, no half-off Big Macs.

So what is the answer? My suggestion is so simple and so well-proven I cannot believe it is not being shouted from every rooftop in D.C: treat health insurance like car insurance!

To begin with, it must be lifestyle-tested. Your car insurance rates are dependent upon your driving. If you avoid accidents entirely (or pay for fender-benders out of your own pocket), or if the accident is not your fault, your insurance premiums stay low. In healthcare, this means that you must live a healthy life. Maybe twice a year, you go in for a check-up. They look at your triglycerides and lipids, your waist-to-height ratio, check to see if you smoke or drink or do drugs. Based on the results, your health insurance premiums are set. Live well, pay little. Live badly, pay lots.

But what about the unforseeable? If my car's steering goes out suddenly and I get in an accident, I am not held liable -- the car company is. Likewise, if I am born with a congenital defect, my insurance premiums would not be raised. It's just bad luck and would be paid for out of profits. But if I'm a hundred pounds overweight, my premium would go through the roof. Go to the mall these days and see where your health insurance dollar is being spent: at Sbarro pizza by the obscenely obese guy in sweat pants and the "What me worry?" tee shirt. Why shouldn't he pay more for his health insurance? Likewise, why should Lance Armstrong pay for his testicular cancer? Was there anything in his lifestyle that contributed to it? If not, then Lance's health insurance premiums should be the lowest on earth. I'm glad to chip in to help him because he is the textbook example of an innocent victim. But not the Sbarro guy. He deserves to pay for his own heart bypass surgery.

In keeping with personal responsibility, why should an employer pay for your health insurance? He doesn't pay to insure your car, does he? It should be your responsibility and yours alone. That way, you'll be encouraged to shop around (like you do with Geico and Allstate) to find the best deal. Stripped of the obligation to pay for your health costs, your employer might choose to pay you more, hire another worker (end of the recession, kids!), pay higher dividends to shareholders, or pocket the money himself. In any case, more money would be loosed in the economy, more goods and services would be sold, and everyone would benefit. "A rising tide lifts all boats."

Under my proposal, the government doesn't need to get into healthcare at all. Evil corporations, seeking profit, would do so, just like the dozens of evil car companies worldwide who compete to sell me an evil Honda or an evil Hundai. Evil hospitals would be more efficient, more responsive to virtuous consumer demands ("I want seatbelts with my colonoscopy, please!"), and evil investors would reap evil rewards, which they would then reinvest into the evil economy. If my evil healthcare company failed to provide me with virtuous service, I would go elsewhere. And if, by malfeasance, the evil bastards killed me, my estate would have the right to sue the stethoscope off them, just like we can do with the evil auto insurance companies.

Automobile insurance works well in America. The government isn't in it (though I'm sure they'd love to be). Using the same model, our healthcare can only improve. (Indeed, let's go one step further and privatize the post office, divvy it up between FedEx and others, and get a letter back down to a reasonable cost.)

Note the image of the cadeuses, above. Can you make out the dollar sign in the twining serpents? Doctors don't go to medical school solely to be good Samaritans -- they also go to make a good living. The result for me is good health, if I do my part. I have a high-deductible insurance plan, which gives me incentives to live a healthy life and forego skydiving. The result is my health care costs are minimal and my health is . . . well . . . maximal! And it doesn't cost you one red cent!

The only one I worry about is Ronald McDonald. He's going to have to find another line of work.

My TV Cannot Survive the Iranian Uprising

I WAS SO ANGRY, I ALMOST THREW MY SHOE AT THE TV. An entire nation had been subjugated, a people enslaved, their culture decimated, their vast wealth purloined by a totalitarian regime. The world stood by, the extent of its outrage limited to making angry faces at the aggressor.

I am not talking about Iran. I am talking about Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. When George H.W. Bush finally ordered the liberation of Kuwait, it was over so fast that everyone was stunned. They called it the "100 hour war."

Kuwait secured, our army amassed on the Iraq border. "Go get him!" I shouted at the TV. "Get the maniac who started this whole thing!" But President Bush, himself a creature of diplomacy (he had been U.S. ambassador to China) refused to do the obvious. "That is not our U.N. mandate," he said in measured tones. The Left heaved a sigh of relief ("We are not aggressors!") and the Right chucked their footwear at televisions all across America in exasperation. And so our troops came home and over the next decade, Saddam Hussein murdered more than a million of his own people before we finally removed him, at great loss of American life and treasure.

No history lesson has ever been more indelibly etched on my consciousness: When evil threatens liberty, free men must fight.

History repeats its lessons often, so even the dumbest student will eventually understand. It is doing so in Iran at this moment. A revolution not unlike our own American revolution is struggling to get traction. People are rebelling against an oppressive regime, marching in the street, using social networks to organize (twittering on the Internet instead of placing lanterns in church towers), and risking their lives.

And what does our Blatherer in Chief do? After almost a week of silence, he finally mouths a few lofty sentiments but does nothing. It is left up to individuals, including thousands of American citizens, to create ersatz servers using cell phones, so Iranians can communicate with each other. Facebook users all over the world are changing their network to Tehran, so the government doesn't know they are outside Iran and thus shut their pages down.

Yesterday, I witnessed a small, pro-Iran march in Salt Lake City. Like their Tehran counterparts, most of the marchers were college-age kids. They were clean-cut and conservative in their dress, clearly from the right side of the political spectrum; ordinary kids who came out in support of freedom, not the usual special interest politics of the Left.

And where is the Left? Where are all the people who bombarded me with e-mail about genocide in Darfur? They are silent, because while the Left is full of compassion, it has no interest in actual freedom. It wants to save the starving child but not the angry young adult. The difference is revealing: the starving child cannot survive without the do-gooder's compassion; a true revolutionary wants only the tools to secure his own freedom -- he doesn't want your compassion; he wants a gun. Thus, his needs do not coincide with the true needs of the Left, which are about obtaining feel-good, self-congratulatory mantras to intone at the next faculty mixer.

Twenty years ago, Tianenmen Square in China presented the West with the same dilemma. Should rhetoric be our only weapon against oppression? What did we do to help the protesters in that communist country? Nothing. Many died then; many are dying today in Tehran. A million died in Iraq before we finally did anything.

And this time around it's a no-brainer, because Iran is not only ready for democracy, it is almost ready to explode a nuclear device over Tel Aviv. Nuclear capability is the reason we did nothing to aid the Tianenmen Square demonstrators. North Korea (where two generations of starvation has reduced the average height to just 5'2") continues its self-annihilation because it has nuclear weapons. Why don't my friends on the Left send me e-mails about genocide in North Korea?

History repeats itself. I just wish it would shout, because we are clearly deaf.

My TV's days are numbered . . .

In the Valley of the Death of Perspective

IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH is a well-wrtten, well-acted, well-made, and completely wrong-headed film that speaks volumes about the actors, filmmakers, and Hollywood executives' left-wing and anti-American world view. Out of their own mouths, so to speak.

Tommy Lee Jones plays Hank, a retired military investigator working with small town detective Emily Sanders (Charlize Theron) to first find, then uncover the reason for the death of Hank's son Mike (Jonathan Tucker), a recent returnee from the Iraq war. They ultimately discover that Mike was murdered during a night on the town which included visiting a strip club, fighting in the parking lot, illegal drug use, and having sex with a hooker . . . you know, just a typical Saturday night for our enlisted men. The climactic reveal is that Mike was senselessly killed by one of his buddies, a combat comrade in Iraq, for no apparent reason. Indeed, said the perpetrator: "It could have easily been Mike killing me."

No wonder the $23 million film made less than $7 million in the U.S.

I have no problem with the film strictly as film. It is perfectly acceptable fare: a murder mystery. And I have no trouble with the military setting. People do terrible things everywhere. But why In the Valley of Elah was one of the first (and few) Hollywood films to be made about the Iraq war is inexplicable. Surely, no one on the Left is asserting that more than a minscule proportion of our soldiers are murderous sociopaths. No, what they're really saying is that war, especially war the way America fights it, turns decent young men like Mike into sociopaths; in other words, we're creating a whole generation of brutal murderers.

This is the "Gitmo creates terrorists" argument, for which, statistically, there is absolutely no evidence. But lack of evidence never deters a true believer. In fact, lack of evidence gives rise to a leap of faith, which is the staple of under-informed, emotionally-oriented people. "I care! Isn't that enough?" they seem to shout when contrary facts arise.

No, it isn't enough. Accuracy would also be nice. And lest anyone reject my assertion that this film is anti-American, how else do you explain the final shot, where Hank raises a weathered American flag upside down, a universal sign of distress. With this image, the filmmakers are saying America is in trouble because of the way we fight wars; we are destroying the young men and women in our military. This is also an age-old Leftist canard: soldiers are victims. (Ignore the fact that our military is 100% voluntary.) In one scene (I love how filmmakers reveal their own motivation as well as their characters'), Hank's wife Joan (uber-Leftie Susan Sarandon), chides him for his military background, saying their son Mike joined up because he was raised in Hank's home; he literally had no choice. So not only are soldiers victims, they were brainwashed into being such.

To recap, this is Hollywood's view of the military and America's foreign policy: Evil engagements abroad (always for ultimately nefarious reasons, e.g. "blood for oil!"); CYA coverups by the military (the liaison, Lt. Kirklander (Jason Patric) is an unlikeable, insensitive company man); immoral behavior by our troops (the inciting incident in the film, which drove Mike "crazy" was his hitting a child on an Iraqi street with his Hummer, because there were standing "orders" to never stop a convoy for a pedestrian because that usually set them up for an ambush (sounds like a good policy to me), yet Mike never swerved or hit the horn; he just roared straight ahead, killing the child); illegal drug use, drunken fighting, consorting with hookers and murder being de rigeur behavior of soldiers on leave; yet these same soldiers are credulous children, victims of over-zealous, gung-ho parents and the corrupt militaristic American culture, which put them in the position where they have no choice: they simply must become sociopaths.

If this is the sort of film Hollywood makes to mark the Iraqi war (a war which, by the way, has been, for all intents and purposes, soundly won), then the upside-down flag is indeed apropos. But instead of the local VFW post, it should be flown over the Kodak Theater where they hold the Academy Awards.