{"id":8753,"date":"2012-06-28T10:04:39","date_gmt":"2012-06-28T14:04:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=8753"},"modified":"2012-07-03T19:14:21","modified_gmt":"2012-07-03T23:14:21","slug":"to-save-money-dont-exclude-the-poor-exclude-the-sick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/06\/28\/to-save-money-dont-exclude-the-poor-exclude-the-sick\/","title":{"rendered":"To save money, don’t exclude the poor, exclude the sick"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The Republican privilege-principle<\/a> of Tyler Cowen, Bryan Fischer and Rick Perry isn\u2019t just morally monstrous, it\u2019s also bad economics.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to accept the principle that sometimes poor people will die just because they are poor,\u201d says Cowen.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is simply no way to control the cost of health care if hospitals are obligated to provide healthcare to all regardless of their ability to pay,\u201d says Fischer.<\/p>\n

But they\u2019re both wrong. Poor people aren\u2019t the source of the runaway cost of health care, and \u2014 even though there are so many of them \u2014 denying poor people access to health care still wouldn\u2019t save much money.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s sick<\/em> people, not poor people, who are responsible for the high cost of health care. There\u2019s no savings to be had from excluding the poor, but trillions<\/em> can be saved by excluding the sick.<\/p>\n

Insurance companies figured that out a long time ago. That\u2019s what all that \u201cpre-existing condition\u201d stuff was all about.<\/p>\n

I appreciate that for people like Cowen and Fischer, kicking sick people when they\u2019re down doesn\u2019t provide quite the same emotional satisfaction as dancing on the backs of the poor, but once they realize the scale of the economic savings at stake here, I think they\u2019ll come around to appreciate the insurers\u2019 position.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ll see that, to paraphrase Cowen, \u201cWe need to accept the principle that sometimes sick people will die just because they are sick.\u201d And if we\u2019d just allow that to happen without trying to interfere, we\u2019d at last have a real free market in health care.<\/p>\n

This shift \u2014 rejecting the sick instead of rejecting the poor \u2014 could also provide what Cowen and Fischer personally need from a health care system. For Cowen, being healthy, it would reassure him that he is a winner and not a loser. And for Fischer, being healthy, it would reassure him that he is among the righteous and not among the damned.<\/p>\n

And when it comes down to it, that\u2019s all either man really needs. The costs and the political wrangling are just a sideshow to what they\u2019re really looking for in health care policy: a sense that their lives have meaning (by which they mean a sense of being better than<\/em> other people).<\/p>\n

OK, enough morbid snark, here\u2019s a more hopeful story as we wait to hear whether or not the Supreme Court has decided that the Constitution requires<\/em> us to exclude sick people from health care. John Blake of CNN shares the conversion story of a former health insurance executive<\/a>:<\/p>\n

When Wendell Potter first saw them, he froze.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt felt like touching an electrical fence,\u201d he says. \u201cI remember tearing up and thinking, how could this be real.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thousands of them had lined up under a cloudy sky in an open field. Many had camped out the night before. When their turns came, doctors treated them in animal stalls and on gurneys placed on rain-soaked sidewalks.<\/p>\n

They were Americans who needed basic medical care. Potter had driven to the Wise County Fairgrounds in Virginia in July 2007 after reading that a group called Remote Area Medical, which flew American doctors to remote Third World villages, was hosting a free outdoor clinic.<\/p>\n

Potter, a Cigna health care executive who ate from gold-rimmed silverware in corporate jets, says that morning was his \u201cRoad to Damascus\u201d experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt looked like a refugee camp,\u201d Potter says. \u201cIt just hit me like a bolt of lightning. What I was doing for a living was making it necessary for people to resort to getting care in animal stalls.\u201d<\/p>\n

The U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s decision Thursday on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act is a colossal legal and political issue. For Potter, though, the issue became a crisis of faith.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Republican privilege-principle of Tyler Cowen, Bryan Fischer and Rick Perry isn\u2019t just morally monstrous, it\u2019s also bad economics. \u201cWe need to accept the principle that sometimes poor people will die just because they are poor,\u201d says Cowen. \u201cThere is simply no way to control the cost of health care if hospitals are obligated to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[69,58],"class_list":["post-8753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-class-warfare","tag-antigovernment","tag-greed"],"yoast_head":"\nTo save money, don't exclude the poor, exclude the sick<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Republican privilege-principle of Tyler Cowen, Bryan Fischer and Rick Perry isn't just morally monstrous, it's also bad economics. 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"We need to accept\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/06\/28\/to-save-money-dont-exclude-the-poor-exclude-the-sick\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"slacktivist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-06-28T14:04:39+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2012-07-03T23:14:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/06\/28\/to-save-money-dont-exclude-the-poor-exclude-the-sick\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/06\/28\/to-save-money-dont-exclude-the-poor-exclude-the-sick\/\",\"name\":\"To save money, don't exclude the poor, exclude the sick\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-06-28T14:04:39+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-07-03T23:14:21+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47\"},\"description\":\"The Republican privilege-principle of Tyler Cowen, Bryan Fischer and Rick Perry isn't just morally monstrous, it's also bad economics. \\\"We need to accept\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/06\/28\/to-save-money-dont-exclude-the-poor-exclude-the-sick\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/06\/28\/to-save-money-dont-exclude-the-poor-exclude-the-sick\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/06\/28\/to-save-money-dont-exclude-the-poor-exclude-the-sick\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"To save money, don’t exclude the poor, exclude the sick\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/\",\"name\":\"slacktivist\",\"description\":\""Test everything; hold fast to what is good."\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47\",\"name\":\"Fred Clark\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7083ccd514d4fb8d5043041756d766a0?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7083ccd514d4fb8d5043041756d766a0?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg\",\"caption\":\"Fred Clark\"},\"description\":\"Fred Clark is a graduate of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary (now called Palmer Seminary), of Eastern College (now called Eastern University) and of the fundamentalist Timothy Christian High School (still fundamentalist and still called Timothy Christian High School, but not really thrilled to have a snarky, liberal, tree-hugging, pro-choice, pro-GLBT, peacenik, commie, evolutionist as such a vocal alumnus). A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. 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