Everyone Who Has It Wants To Keep It

That said, unregulated “pure” capitalism, does not really exist in practice—as every capitalist nation does impose limits and regulations on its economic system.  Political debates question what these rules and limits should be, but they do not question whether or not any regulations that optimize capitalism ought to exist.

All capitalist countries nationalize industries that are compromised by the profit motive.  It is generally accepted, for example, that public highways are best built by governments.  The costs are so high, and their function so critical to a nation’s prosperity, that public highways must be built to serve public needs, rather than the need to generate profit.  Another example is the military.  Again, the costs are prohibitively high.  And more important, a system in which an army makes money by going to war, or promulgating the threat of war for profit, would inevitably bring dire consequences in terms of human lives and national interests.

Consider another example on a smaller scale:  the local fire department.  Generally, around the world, the fire departments are government organizations.  In case of fire, they respond without question.  Imagine the alternative:  what would happen in a for-profit fire department?  Would the crew rush to your house, and demand proof of payment before dousing the flames and rescuing the baby?  If you haven’t paid your “fire bill” do they watch your house burn?  And do they wait until the neighbor’s house is smoking, and then check the neighbor’s payment history?

No!  Instead we have a socialized system that works:  everyone pays a small fee in the form of taxes and we’re all covered in the rare event of a fire.  It’s like insurance!

The great majority of enterprises can thrive in the capitalist system.  Look at automobiles.  Ready-to-wear clothing.  Ballpoint pens.  Computers.  Industrial machinery.  Building materials.  Furniture.  Groceries.  Liquor.  Tanning salons.  Nuts and bolts and nails and screws.  You name it.  On and on.  All of these industries and myriad others have enjoyed progress and have been rewarded by the profit motive while delivering ever-better products to consumers who buy them.  And while capitalism is certainly not perfect, it confers benefits to all stakeholders when reasonably regulated: the capitalists, the consumers, and the workers.

Indeed, capitalism functions optimally when workers earn enough to participate in the system as consumers as well as investors;  and when investors participate in intelligent risk on a level, reasonably regulated playing field;  and when the captains of industry can fairly seek outsized rewards for their well-considered risk and wise management.

Society suffers, however, when a critical industry reaps handsome profits denying crucial services instead of delivering those services.  Think about this for a moment.  How can society as a whole prosper when absolutely essential needs are denied so that one industry can make piles of money?

Any industry that constructively serves all the stakeholders of capitalism earns profit when a product or service is delivered.  When a car is sold, the manufacturer and the dealer earn money, and the consumer gets a new car!  What a great arrangement!  Everybody is so happy!  The same is true for ballpoint pens and time in a tanning bed and ordering a meal in a restaurant and just about everything else . . .

. . . with one giant, agonizing, destructive, insane, cruel, gruesome, blood-sucking exception: health insurance.

When controlled by the insurance companies, the profit motive is at odds with the delivery of care.  The less medical care the client base receives, the more money the insurers make!  What a great deal for the insurers!  You pay me.  You see a doctor and file a claim.  I say no—that’s not covered, it says so on page 1,287 of your policy.  Didn’t you read it?  You ask again, I say no, you ask again, I say okay and maybe give you just enough to make you go away.  Unregulated health insurance is ass-backwards to capitalism because the industry gets rich while society, as a whole, suffers.  This would make a wonderful horror movie, but it does not make a wonderful society.  The issue is very simple: health care, like fire fighting and waging war, do not serve stakeholders’ needs when chained to the profit motive.

When health insurance companies are left to their own devices—which is to say relatively unregulated—they opt to insure only those who are healthy, and decline coverage to those who are likely to need care.  Such denial of care does serve the profit motive well, but robs our society of basic health.  And to add insult to pain, those in thrall to this gruesome parasite on the body of capitalism call citizens who need medical attention “consumers.”  You are a consumer when shopping for a new truck or a ballpoint pen or a nice egg salad sandwich, but you are not a “consumer” when suffering from a stab wound or a cancer diagnosis or ebola.

In a broad sense, the system preferred by the insurance companies ought to be called non-health insurance—as in,  “Let us make lots of money while we make it damn near impossible for you to get the care you need.”  The broad economic and social costs of national non-health insurance are difficult to calculate.  These costs spread out in heavy waves and include:

• The ripple effects of family bankruptcy, the primary cause of which is a health care crisis that most families cannot afford.
• Higher lifetime medical costs accelerated by avoidance of routine and preventative care, because such maintenance, which has proven to reduce lifetime medical costs, is unaffordable.
• Dampened economic and social freedom because many cannot leave a job in order to start a small business because decent independent health care is either unaffordable or unavailable.

Automobile insurance is routinely required by the states, because it has become obvious that the cost of uninsured motorists is prohibitively high to both motorists and insurance companies.  The common good is served by requiring all car owners to carry insurance.  The same common sense imperative should apply to health care, only more so, because unlike auto ownership in which  [1.] you may opt out of car ownership, and  [2.] an accident may never happen—virtually everyone needs health care in the course of a lifetime, even if it is only preventative.

Control groups are impossible to establish among nations.  So we have to use the best comparisons available.  And overwhelming conclusions obtain from this simple fact:  all but one of the modern, industrialized nations have nationalized health care, and none that have it are trying to get rid of it.

The one country in the contemporary world of industrialized nations that does not have a national health care system happens to be the richest of them all.  The United States.

The internal arguments in this richest nation seem to focus on two issues:
[1.] People should not depend on the government.
[2.] Other national health care systems are flawed.

These arguments are nothing but thinly veiled ploys to sustain the immoral, society-sucking profits gained by denying health care to those “consumers” who need it.

Depend on the government?  Yes, we depend on the government!  We depend on the government for our national defense.  We depend on the government for highways and fire departments and police departments and airline safety and disaster intervention and on and on.  We should depend on the government to judiciously regulate health care, which is a matter of health or death, people!

The United States prides itself on freedom.  Freedom includes the right to leave a job, start a business, get treated for cancer and go on to live a productive life without screaming at a soulless bureaucrat over why a band-aid in the hospital cost $50 when I said I didn’t want one!!!

And here’s the most politically startling bit:  this is not a liberal or conservative issue.  Ask a mainstream conservative Brit if he or she believes the National Health Service should be taken away.  He or she will look at you as if you’ve taken leave of your bloody senses.  Of course not!  The same is true in Canada, Germany, Spain, Japan, France, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, the Netherlands—you name it!

Again and simply:  we have the right to a stalwart national defense and a fire department that douses a fire and an interstate highway system that allows us to travel around and haul goods across the country.  We ought to be able to get fixed when our bodies break.  That’s the freedom we deserve, and it’ll cost less, socially and economically, than the you-can’t-have-it system we have now.

As if all this wasn’t stupid and morally obvious enough, here’s a crazy little secret hiding in plain sight:  we already have national health care.  It’s called Medicare.  And anyone who has it wants to keep it.  Yes, we already have national health care, but it’s only for some people.  And the some people who have it won’t let it go.  Why not for everyone?

And regarding the shortcomings of national health care systems around the world, here’s a News Flash:  They Are Not Perfect!  Welcome to real life!  Nothing out there is perfect.  But all the other systems of national health care do allow citizens to receive treatment without question or worry of bankruptcy.  And everyone who has it wants to keep it.  And for all you economists out there, all the other nationalized health care countries in the world spend less and get better results than we do.

Yes, we want capitalism to work—for everybody.  All the stakeholders benefit when the citizens are healthy, reasonably paid, and able to enhance their own fortunes with the freedom and quality of life conferred by Medicare.  And at the same time, such national well-being augments fortunes of the wealthy capitalists because healthy, free, happy citizens consume everything worth consuming.