Congress Shall Not Drop the Public Option and Expand Medicare

Under What Authority Does Congress Think it May Drop the Public Option?

Today, it was announced that Congress has struck a closed door deal to drop the public option from the health care bill and replace it with lowering the buy-in age in MediCare from 65 to 55.  How this deal becomes tenable at this point astonishes me for several reasons.  It is a blatant deprivation of wealth to the detriment of the public and leads logically to a deprivation of civil rights as well.

Consider the essential claim here.  In the interest of providing more affordable healthcare to more “elderly,” we will mandate a deprivation of property (financial resources) from all other uninsured Americans to transfer to existing inefficient health care providing institutions (insurance co., private hospitals, etc.).  In return for your complacency, we will provide you with the poor healthcare that sparked the entire movement for a single-payer public option in the first place.  And if you don’t like it, you will be punished.  Sure, there will be clauses prohibiting refusal of insurance for preexisting conditions, but no prohibition against discrimination by other means such as exorbitant premiums.  Essentially, the health care “providers” give up very little; but, they gain an entire population of uninsured, with less risk factors than the elderly being switched to government healthcare thus decreasing risk and increasing profits for the private health care companies, while increasing risk and decreasing sustainability for the public healthcare system currently in place.

On its face, this shifting of high risk individuals to the public sector (cost) and lower risk individuals to the private companies (benefit) is against the interest of the public.  However, another problem is the unchecked deprivation of personal financial resources (property) and its unabashed transfer to another private source.  Under what authority may the government mandate the public to pay or buy from a private entity.  Traditionally, any levying or mandate of fees by the government has been to a government entity or administrative agency that is directly accountable to the representatives of the people.  Then, when/if the governments proxy apportions some of the levied funds on private companies in furtherance of a legitimate public goal (healthcare) it is less egregious, because at the very least, there is accountability to the public via elections and votes.

Currently, I see no discussion about how the healthcare insurance industry will be accountable to the public and its representatives.  In the alternative, it appears abundantly clear that the public’s representatives are accountable to the healthcare and insurance industry.  Suppose there is a “task force” or agency or committee created to oversee the implementation of an egregious deprivation of wealth for the benefit of the insurance companies.  Suppose further that the agency will allow quick resolution of denials and other curtailments of the supposed service the health care industry is to provide the public.  I submit that such a policy serves not only to deprive the public of property in the form of public wealth in violation of due process, but that it is also an attempt to minimize risk of judicial interference when the insurance industry goes rampant on the unsuspecting public thrust into its grips.

An administrative agency does not have a constitutional command to allow jury trials.  Thus, you will no longer have issues disposed of through your public peers’ perspective on the matters, but a single judge may be the arbiter of your claim.  This will not be any judge, this will be an adminstrative judge, often a lawyer who practiced in the relevant field.  In this case, you’ll see health care and insurance lawyers being appointed to administrative judgeships to arbitor the claims against their former and possibly future employers.  As if we have not already concluded that arbitration generally favors the corporate client.

As a result of trying to maintain oversight of the activities of the health care industry, a proven inefficient industry, congress would be creating a safe haven from any meaningful accountability and depriving the public of historically safeguarded fundamental rights.  If such a slippery slope to deprivation of the right to a jury trial comes to pass, then truly we could say this was a major victory for the insurance and health care industry and a devastating blow to the the wealth of the public and civil/constitutional rights held so sacred by Americans.