Larry Kudlow has asked the question: “Why is it that
Americans don't have the freedom to choose their own health insurance?” He also
says that at least two other pundits, Charles Krauthammer and Dan Henninger are
asking the same question. He says all that and more in his National Review
Online column of November 1, 2013 which came under the title: “The Liberal
Entitlement-State Dream Is Crumbling” and the subtitle: “That's the bigger
message as Obamacare collapses before our very eyes.”
Kudlow repeats the word freedom six times in the column to
tell the readers how much he likes the idea of being free to choose. He also
tells them that “team Obama” wants something else for him, then ends the
presentation this way: “That dream [Obamacare] is crumbling and dissolving
before our very eyes. And that is freedom.” It means that Larry Kudlow – like
many of his ilk; wallstreeters and pundits of the echo chamber – are praying
that President Obama fails.
These people do what they do, and say what they say because
their notion of freedom is so much out of this world, they may as well be from
another universe. The truth is that many people in America today find themselves in a
situation that is similar to where we, Canadians were half a century ago and
before. We too were free to choose, but it was not the freedom we enjoyed
having or the choices we enjoyed making. Some of us had to choose between
eating and paying for health care; between buying a winter coat for the little girl
and sending her little brother to hospital; between going to college and seeing
that dad goes on dialysis. It was a bitter choice that was often accompanied
with tears.
That was true in Canada
because it happened then what is happening now in America . Larry Kudlow, Charles
Krauthammer, Dan Henninger and all those of their ilk can learn about it by
reading not each other's writings, but reading someone like professor James C.
Robinson who wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal on October 28, 2013 under
the title: “Comparison Shopping for Knee Surgery” and the subtitle: “The same
procedure might cost $20,000 or $120,000. Here's one way to bring down prices.”
As seen in the subtitle, a knee surgery can be performed
profitably for $20,000. There were those who charged this much and were happy
with the profit they made. But there were others who made the same profit on
the first $20,000, then asked for another $100,000 to go directly to their
bottom line. Why? Why can something like this happen? Why should it be allowed
to happen at all?
It happens because healthcare is not what Kudlow says it is.
To him, buying health insurance is “like choosing a car, buying a home, or
investing in a stock. We can handle it,” he says. Maybe he can, as would the
wallstreeters who have the printing press of the Fed in their pocket, but the
same does not apply to the people whose eyes fill with tears when they have to
choose between eating or paying for health care; between buying a winter coat
for the little girl or sending her little brother to hospital; between going to
college or seeing that dad goes on dialysis.
Only when no one in the nation is forced to make these kinds
of choices does the nation become free. But if to give the Kudlows of America
the freedom to choose between a Cadillac plan and a Rolls Royce plan, 40
million others must go without coverage lest healthcare be rationed – the
nation cannot be free. Not only that, but the nation will be living a lie. And
this is what happened four years ago when at the start of the healthcare
debate, the point was repeatedly made that the plan will lead to the rationing
of healthcare whereby the Kudlows of America will get less so that the
downtrodden may get something. In the eyes of some people this was unacceptable,
and they argued against it vehemently.
But the reality is that when you don't have to make that
kind of choice, what is left to choose is what you and your doctor decide you
need at the time that you need it. Unaware as to how a universal healthcare
plan works, Kudlow complains: “As a 60-something, relatively healthy person, I
don't want...” What he does not say is what it is that he wants. And that's for
a good reason; it is that he cannot tell now what he will want then because it
has not happened yet. Will he have heart troubles? A stroke? Prostate troubles?
Diabetes? An accident that will break his leg, his arm, his neck? He doesn't
know, and this is why a good coverage must be a comprehensive one. It would be
a plan that covers everything, and takes everyone under its umbrella.
The whole civilized world has that, and America