A Radical Suggestion

Like some of my posts from time to time, this is somewhat of a polemic meant to stir up debate. The issues are complex and both liberals and conservatives tend to be stubborn in their ideologies. So here goes...

In order to solve the health crisis of the uninsured, several factors must be addressed. First and foremost is healthcare delivery. Given the thrust of politics in this culture for the past 30 years, I think it highly unlikely that we will be seeing anything resembling a national healthcare service anytime soon. While the evidence when assessed neutrally shows that national healthcare result in fair distribution of service and little actual delay of vital care, there is just no will for another government program of this sort. With plans to dismantle social security, I hardly see a Canadian system in the works for healthcare. Some might say this is giving up the ship too fast. But at what point does one stop fighting the enemy, read the writing on the wall and try and get some work done.

The republicans have managed to barely pull off two election victories. They certainly have no mandate to act on behalf of the religious right despite current media rhetoric. But they are in power and the majority of Americans favor their fiscal policies on taxes and federal power. So we are about to embark upon a social experiment quite different from that of Europe over the past 50 years. It is possible that we will descend into a backwards theocracy, but only if we let it happen. There may be a third road between the theocratic right and the anarchistic left. That would be the restoration of the progressive libertarian republican party. Sort of a mix between Teddy Roosevelt and Barry Goldwater and Abraham Lincoln.

Since the republicans are in power, all democrats who share important common beliefs should consider switching parties, including sitting members of congress. Rather than try and win back the congress for the democrats, perhaps moderates and libertarians should just attempt to wrest control of the republican party for themselves, the true American majority. This indeed is the hope of many moderate republicans with whom I have acquaintance. We can either have a true ownership society as Mr. Bush has recently proposed or a blatant power grab by those who are already rich as many fear. But moderate democrats will really have to consider what issues are most important to them and how to best accomplish those goals. Many republicans are pro-choice, anti-militaristic, pro civil rights, environmentalist, free speech advocates. The reason they are republicans is because they see less harm to society from the religious zealots in their own party than they do from the equally zealous interest groups of the democrats. The majority of Americans will never join with the left. But the majority of Americans could insure the republicans party is a libertarian majority instead of a moral majority.

So how does a society care for its poorest without a vast government safety net. Well, it would be true that if everyone owned property, then they would be far less likely to ever need government help. The value of property over years and generations is immense. Property provides equity and collateral which equal security. If everyone had access to the resources that come with property ownership, many other issues would be moot, such as how to pay for health insurance. With no need to provide extensive government services to the poor and elderly, taxes on state and federal levels could be cut to bare bones. So the question is where does this property come from and how does it get in the hands of the poor? Hint: its not stocks.

A solution proposed by the Libertarian party is to sell off (at a nominal cost) federally held lands in homeowner sized plots (not corporate sized chunks for development). The federal government holds a huge amount of land and does not manage it well. They are responsible for much of the pollution in the country. We should finish the promise of the homestead act and give every American the right to own property. Sounds almost communist, but it was 19th century Americans who wrote it. Giving everyone a parcel large enough to raise a family would barely put a dent in current land holdings. And homeowners would steward the land well, no doubt better than the feds. With the playing field finally leveled once and for all, we could move forward into a Libertarian utopia, where everyone has the money to become educated and the time to ponder the important decisions of the electorate. At that point and only at that point will we have a true democracy in America.

In a completely market based healthcare system with no insurance, there would be competition for all healthcare services without government interference. Libertarian republicans generally favor free trade in herbs and minimal licensing laws. In other words, rather than increasing the barriers to practice with added titles and supposed prestige, the Libertarian solution would be to let anyone practice and educate the buyer to beware. As mentioned previously, voluntary systems of regulation could always be established if there was a true market demand (which I believe there would be). Education will replace regulation as the main executive task of the government. Competition and lower taxes will make all services more affordable. Some might predict a public health disaster if the government doesn't keep a tighter rein on things. Buts lets get real. What could be a worse disaster than the current 67% obesity epidemic. Our healthcare system has failed to deliver health, perhaps because it has failed to offer adequate affordable options.

There is little or no chance that we will ever have universal nationalized healthcare . Since the current system of regulations has not controlled costs nor allowed a true market system to develop, we also really have yet to see what would happen if we allowed the market to actually sort these things out. The argument that the market does not fairly distribute healthcare is a specious one when no such system has been used in the US for over three quarters of a century. Given that we often heark back to those simpler times in our hearts and souls, perhaps we should reconsider their economic models as well. The welfare society was started because so many indigent people were suffering so intensely. Yet so many still suffer after all this time. It is reasonable to ask whether things would have been different if all those indigents had been given some property that would have accrued in value rather than just checks to be spent hand to mouth? I bet it would have cost less .... in so many ways.