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March 23, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
22:07
1621 True News: How to Talk to People About Obama's Health Care Bill

It's really about asking questions to see if people can actually think...

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Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
It is the 23rd of March, 2010.
The health care bill, as I sadly predicted, has passed Congress and it's going to be ratified, it's going to be approved.
There's no way to turn back now, and that hasn't been for at least a generation.
I know that it feels like you can write and yell and wave signs and so on.
But it's not going to happen.
The basic premise is that more government control and enforcement is the solution to just about every problem under the sun.
That is the way people think.
That is their ideology. That is their matrix.
That is the world they live in.
Whenever you have a problem, you point more guns at more people, and that solves the problem.
We live in a political system modeled on the first half of Goodfellas where everybody has shiny shoes and broad smiles and nobody's in jail.
And so that is the reality.
That's all that people can think of.
Have a problem? Pass a law.
Have a problem? Go to your Congress.
Have a problem? Point a gun.
Have a problem? Threaten people with jail.
Have a problem? Steal from them through taxes and fines.
That's all that people can think of in the majority of society.
And suggesting another approach that a cessation of violence is in fact the solution to a problem is not valid.
It's not going to work. It's just not going to work because people can't think that way.
They've been so conditioned through a variety of social institutions, both public and private, to think continually, have a problem, pass a law.
That's just how the government makes us all retarded and makes us all grab For the golden gun, you know, that one gun that we can point at someone or a group of people and have everything turn out well.
It's the fundamental and final illusion that mankind has, that you can point more guns at more people and end up with a better world.
That is entirely tragic.
And unfortunately, a lot of suffering will have to occur before people realize this.
Now, a number of people have written to me and said, How can I talk about healthcare issues with people?
I think that's a great question.
I think that's a great question. I will tell you my approach and obviously maybe it'll be of use to you and maybe it won't.
My approach is I'm always curious, I always wonder whether people are capable of processing information that does not conform with their ideology.
I think that's really, really important.
And so when I talk to somebody about, say, healthcare, I will start off with a speech, something like this, and, you know, maybe you'll find it of use.
I will say, do you ever wonder why, in the conversation about healthcare, and I agree, healthcare is way too expensive in the United States, and it's way too expensive here in Canada too, but here in Canada we pay through time and the silent death of lost opportunities and rationing.
I mean, access to a waiting list is not access to healthcare, and all we have in Canada is access to a waiting list that is rationed in catastrophic ways.
So, healthcare is way too expensive.
In the socialized countries, it's way too expensive in terms of time.
In America, it's way too expensive in terms of cost.
And it's not complicated to figure out why something is way too expensive.
Why is something way too expensive?
Because there's a monopoly.
You don't even have to take Econ 101 to understand that.
Why is Brad Pitt able to command $20 million of film?
Because he looks like me. And because he has a monopoly on Brad Pitt.
There's only one, and so he has a monopoly.
If you could clone Brad Pitt, and Lord knows I've tried, then you could actually reduce the price of a Brad Pitt movie considerably because there would be lots of people who could do exactly the same thing competing.
You have a monopoly, And the price goes up.
I mean, how could you even argue that?
Everybody has to understand that.
So the question is, how has monopoly influenced and affected the healthcare system?
Well, I've done some videos on this in an interview with Dr.
Rewart, so you can look up those if you like.
They're in the True News Under Healthcare.
But basically and fundamentally, the most essential monopoly In the healthcare system is the monopoly on doctors that is created and enforced by the government, where it's completely ridiculous, right?
In order to freeze somebody's wart or stitch up a cut, you have to go through almost a decade's worth of education.
I mean, that's completely insane.
Because you have to go through that much education, people get into massive debt, they fear the crazy tort system of malpractice lawsuits and so on, but they have this monopoly.
And when you have a monopoly, your price is going to go up.
And it's not because doctors are evil or bad, and I know a lot of doctors don't like the AMA any more than I do, but the reality is, when you've gone heavily into debt and you've sacrificed an enormous amount, and you've deferred having a family and you've deferred having kids for the sake of completing your education, you're going to have to charge just to pay off your debts, just to pay for the amount of time that it takes, right?
The more time that you've spent being trained as a doctor, The more you're going to have to charge on the other side, because if you can't charge that much, nobody's going to want to be a doctor.
I mean, that's the deal. And isn't it crazy, right?
Like, I mean, if you're a bus driver, you have to take mandated rests and mandated naps.
If you're a truck driver, you have to take mandated rests and naps.
But if you're a doctor, they can work you for 36 hours straight at a pretty low wage, and somehow people aren't concerned about it.
Anyway, we understand that it's a nutty system.
So, a monopoly is that which will result in increased costs.
That's not even controversial.
So, how do you deal with monopoly problems?
Well, you stop having the government enforce the monopoly.
It's that simple. That is, again, I hate to even say it because it's sort of like saying, I'm bald and this room is red.
It's a ridiculous thing to say, right?
But you break the monopoly and then prices fall down to non-monopolistic levels.
I mean, that's obvious, especially when you have a monopoly combined with an essential service like healthcare.
I mean, there's nothing to say, right?
So I'm always curious, like, if people will sort of understand that and say, well, does monopoly drive up prices?
Of course monopoly drives up prices.
Does the government enforce a monopoly on who can call themselves a doctor?
And through the AMA, are there professional restrictions on who can provide what healthcare services?
Of course there are. And if you break those restrictions, you go to jail.
So, the first thing you would do when you want a lower cost is you stop enforcing the monopoly.
Simple, simple, simple, right?
You would allow non-doctors to perform, oh, you have a throat infection, let me take a swab, here's your antibiotics, be sure to take them all.
You know, how long is it going to take someone to train to do that?
Well, I'm pretty sure I learned waitering in less time.
So that would be something that would be very, very obvious to do and embarrassing to even mention because it is so obvious.
It's allowing nurses to do more and not having these huge crazy restrictions on nurses.
It's allowing nurses to do more.
Anyway, you understand that you could easily bring the health care costs down enormously just by doing that sort of stuff.
I got an email from a listener who's in China, and he went to go and see a doctor in China.
He got his throat, he got seen, he got his throat swabbed, he got antibiotics, he was in and out in 40 minutes and it cost him $14.
His wife gave birth, they had a C-section, lots of complications, thank heavens everybody's okay.
It cost him a grand total of just over $800.
Because they have more of a free market in healthcare in China than you could even imagine in the United States or Canada or any of the other Western countries.
So I would ask the people, if monopolies increase prices, which everybody with any brain cells accepts, Why is it that reducing or eliminating the monopoly on health care provision was never even discussed?
I mean, that's an important question, right?
Now, you may disagree and you may say, well, that's terrible and all these bad things would happen if doctors didn't have a monopoly on putting two stitches into your thumb.
But it's something that should at least be discussed, because what it would do is it would reduce healthcare costs considerably, considerably, like by multiple factors.
And it would not add a dime to the national debt.
It would not require any additional taxation.
It would just be a massive deflation in the amount of money that doctors could charge for what they provide, because they would actually face some real competition.
Why was that not even on the table?
Now, if people can ask themselves that question, then I think that's very interesting.
And that's just opening a discussion, you know?
Because I think you don't want to oppose legislation.
I mean, opposing legislation is like...
it's pointless. I mean, it's like opposing the weather.
It doesn't mean anything.
Because opposing legislation just means, I don't like this.
But what happens when people hear you say, I don't like this healthcare legislation, what they hear is, I want the poor to die in misery and Dickensian tuberculosis, coughing weakly into the gutter and drive past them, spraying them with additional mud to add insult to injury.
That's what they hear. So I oppose high healthcare costs, I think is the way to approach.
I massively oppose high healthcare costs.
If there's one thing that makes people's life frightening and dangerous and literally deadly, it is high healthcare costs.
So I massively oppose high healthcare costs, which is why I oppose the healthcare bill, which is going to add, according to some very detailed economic estimates, three, count them, three trillion dollars to the national debt.
$3 trillion. You don't just get 22 million more people into doctors' offices without paying for it somehow.
And the taxes aren't even going to remotely cover it.
So it's just a way of going further into debt.
And for anybody to suggest that the solution to social problems is the subtle thievery of future generations and the weakening and collapse of the entire economic system, Is crazy.
That's just like saying, let's repair this bridge by bombing it.
I mean, that doesn't make any sense.
But, I mean, that's where people are. They can't think of anything else.
So if people can ask themselves, why was an expansion of competition among healthcare providers never even discussed?
It wasn't even discussed and derided, like, oh, that's a crazy idea.
It doesn't even, you know, float up into the discussion.
If people can ask themselves that question, then they're on the road.
To some true, valuable, fantastic, deep, rich, and wonderful knowledge.
If they can just ask that question.
You don't even have to ask the question, why was it not approved?
You have to ask the question, why wasn't it even on the table?
Why was it never even mentioned?
Well, of course, the reality is that the doctors would go nuts if you attempted to increase their competition.
And I'm not saying I don't sympathize.
I do, right? I mean, if you went to medical school for 10 years, you're expecting a certain kind of income, and if the competition is expanded, that income is going to go down, and that makes going to medical school a hell of a less good deal, and I really sympathize with that.
But, you know, that doesn't mean that we should allow poor people to not get access to cheap medical care.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry that it didn't work out.
But hey, every time society moves forward, some people suffer.
When you end slavery, there are a whole bunch of people who shipped and sold slaves who were completely out of a job.
And that's just the way things work.
When the car gets invented, the carriage makers are really out of a job, right?
When the car gets invented, the people who used to shovel the horse shit up the streets suddenly have to find new employment.
It is tough when society advances.
But what can you do, right?
I mean, we just hold everything back for the sake of the specific and unjust economic self-interest of particular parties?
Of course not. Of course not.
I think it's really important to just ask.
I'm massively opposed to high healthcare costs.
I think it is one of the worst tragedies in society.
And I am for sustainable solutions.
Sustainable solutions, right? Do you think that the solution to the healthcare crisis should be sustainable?
Well, in a time when the U.S. is massively in debt, it's over 100% of GDP, even for the short-term debt, let alone the unfunded liabilities, which are many, many times the GDP. So it's ridiculously overextended and can't possibly pay off its debts.
So, is it a sustainable solution to add $3 trillion to a massively indebted country?
How is that going to work?
What are you going to cut elsewise?
Now, you can sort of ask these questions, right?
If you reduce the price of healthcare in a very real way by introducing competition, that is a sustainable solution.
And it will result in greater innovation and more people will be competing to provide better services and so on.
And I think that would be all fantastic.
There's a sustainable solution that doesn't add a penny to the national debt and that lowers immediately the cost of healthcare.
It's just breaking the monopoly of the doctors' union and other public sector unions that are massively adding to the cost of healthcare.
So, like nurses and other healthcare providers.
I mean, by the by, one of the reasons why one of the largest healthcare-providing unions is so keen on this legislation and spent a huge amount of money promoting it It's because public sector unions are dangerously underfunded in terms of their pension schemes, and so they need to set up a Ponzi scheme where they continually are getting new people into their payrolls in order to pay the money, in a true Ponzi scheme way, to pay the money up to the people who are retiring.
So they're dangerously underfunded, and so if they can't expand healthcare, their pension schemes are going to collapse, and that's a huge driver behind what is happening in the healthcare system.
Of course, the interests of the pharmaceutical companies, the AMA is behind it because it's going to drive up demand for doctors, which is going to allow them to raise prices.
You have a monopoly, you create a huge amount of additional demand, your prices are going to go up.
There is a sort of basic economic reality as well that I think is really important.
And you can just ask people this question.
I think it's really important.
Just be annoying Socrates gadfly guy or gal.
Just ask questions. So the scheme that's set up at the moment is you can either pay $10,000 for your health care in terms of insurance or you can not buy health care insurance and you can pay a $750 fine and then when you get sick you can buy health care insurance and the insurance companies can't refuse you because of a prior condition.
So you don't pay. You just pay the $750 fine.
You don't pay your health care insurance premiums and then when you get sick Lo and behold, you sign up and they can't say no for a pre-existing condition and you switch over from your $750 a year fine to your $10,000 a year insurance premiums when you need $200,000 worth of care.
How long is that going to take to bankrupt the insurance company?
Any insurance company.
They're going to drop like flies.
So what's going to happen is they're going to lobby the government to massively increase the $750 fine.
They're going to have to, otherwise they're going to go bankrupt.
And so that fine is going to increase into the thousands of dollars, which means that even if you're young and healthy you don't have the option to opt out.
of health care. It's just going to raise massive amounts of costs for those who pretty much don't need health care or at least who not paying $10,000 a year when you're 22 for health care insurance doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
But you won't really have that option.
So again, it's just going to be a massive Ponzi scheme that is going to hoover money out of the young and relatively poor and pour it into the health care of the elderly.
And it's inevitable.
How is it going to be any different?
Now, if people, of course, don't pay healthcare insurance premiums because they'd rather pay the $750 fine to the government, Well, what's going to happen?
Well, the premiums for everyone else are going to have to go up enormously.
So if you're paying $10,000 a year for your family, a bunch of people say, forget it, I'm not doing healthcare.
I'm just paying my $750, which is in effect getting me free healthcare, because if I get sick, I'll just buy healthcare insurance.
Nobody can say no. So you're going to get a whole bunch of people who are in good health dropping out of an insurance system.
But the insurance system only makes money when people pay more than they're consuming, So, the more healthy people who ditch the insurance system, the more money and the more cost is going to be accruing to those who are sick.
This is punishing the sick with higher premiums.
It's punishing the infirm. It's punishing people with diabetes.
It's punishing people with hereditary illnesses.
It's punishing people with chronic health problems with much, much higher costs.
And to reward the healthy and punish the sick My God, that is an evil system.
I mean, it's so unbelievably destructive to have that kind of system.
So, I mean, you could sort of go on and on about the problems in the healthcare system, the cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, the inevitable waiting lines when 22 million people storm the system, or even if only half of that stormed the system, they were going to be huge.
Issues. The lack of promotion of competition.
The hyper-regulation. So when 22 million people need more insurance, what's going to happen is a whole bunch of insurance companies are going to sprout up.
And some people are going to offer insurance, which the government doesn't deem to be real insurance, and so the government is going to have to come out with even more legislation.
In order to get the insurance companies in line with what the government considers to be really, really good insurance.
And so, more regulation of the insurance industry, the prices of insurance are going to go up.
And people aren't going to associate that with the health care bill, because that's why the government likes corporations.
They're the punching bag for the government's under-the-table actions.
It's sort of like Han Solo chatting with that green spindly alien in Star Wars, right?
There's a gun under the table which no one can see, and then there's a smoking ruin called the free market, and people think it committed suicide.
Not so much. There is a flash under the table that lights up both groins and blows away one greenling.
I just sort of wanted to mention that it's really just about asking questions.
Why do you think this wasn't on the table?
What do you think is going to happen when people have the choice between $10,000 of health insurance that they can buy anytime versus a $750 fine?
What is going to happen? Well, that fine is going to have to increase because the price of insurance isn't going to come down.
The price of insurance is, in fact, only going to go up when the price of insurance rises to $12,000 or $15,000 or $20,000 a year.
More and more people are going to opt for the $750 option.
That is going to completely crater What's left of the free market in healthcare?
This is inevitable. What is the result going to be?
The immediate effects are obviously great for people who don't have insurance or can't afford it and who are sick in the moment.
They love it. Of course they're going to be happy about it.
The government unions are really happy about it.
The doctors are really happy about it.
The pharmaceutical companies are really happy about it.
A doctor who has a massive amount of increased demand is going to be much more tempted to simply write a prescription rather than to do that sort of house thing where you get in-depth into a person's lifestyle and really try and figure out what's going on.
So it's going to be a whipping past conveyor belt with pills thrown at people regardless of underlying causes and issues.
So the amount of time that doctors...
I mean doctors already only spend about 18 seconds listening to your issues before coming up with something.
But it's going to get even worse.
So pharmaceutical companies are very happy because they know as demand increases for healthcare provision, prescriptions go up because a prescription takes you 10 seconds to write, whereas really sitting down, listening to someone, getting a detailed history, taking lots of tests, really figuring things out, how is a doctor going to profit on that relative to unhappy?
Here's a prescription, right?
Just pill, pill, pill, pill, pill.
Off you go. Painkillers rather than the treatment of underlying causes.
So, the insurance companies are relatively happy in the short run because they're going to get increased demand, but it's not going to be long before that begins to decay.
Doctors are happy with increased demand.
Governments are very happy with increased power.
People who are sick right now and who really need immediate healthcare, lord help them, right?
I mean, huge amount of sympathy. What a terrible system they're caught up in, both here and in the United States.
They're very happy because they're going to get access to healthcare.
People who are looking to get cheap healthcare or who don't want to pay their premiums right now are very happy because they'll be able to pay them later.
Just pay the fine now and pay them later.
So lots of people are very happy about healthcare and that's sort of why it's moving forward.
But it is a completely unsustainable solution.
It's a completely unsustainable solution.
It is going to drive up costs, and it's going to take a couple of years.
I mean, like all these sorts of things do, a lot of the healthcare provisions are only designed to kick in in a couple of years.
And the reason that the government does that is that way the cause and effect is diluted.
Obviously, right? So if the healthcare provisions kicked in 100% tomorrow, the system would be thrown into chaos and people would flee insurance companies.
Healthcare costs would go way up.
People would suddenly have to wait two or three hours to see a doctor.
You wouldn't be able to get new doctors.
You wouldn't be able to get an appointment for six weeks.
So people would say, man, this is terrible.
They passed this law and look at this chaos.
But what the government always does is when it has something that's going to wreck something, it really puts it off a year or two, so that by the time all that rolls, and it introduces it gradually, so that by the time the disasters roll around, people can't make the connection back to the original problem, right? Like the Fed with the money supply, like the income tax with the national debt.
They just can't make that cause.
In fact, it's too far for them to go.
And I mean, what would it profit them to even look?
We have to deal with the system as it stands.
So I hope that that gives you some useful tips and approaches on how to talk about health care issues.
We all want health care to be affordable and efficient and effective.
And the only way that human beings have ever figured out how to introduce these things is to have a competition among people to provide the best services.
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