Paying For Health Care And Education - Road to the Middle Class

FOR A CENTURY we have lived with the idea that things like education and health care were too important—and too complicated and expensive—for ordinary people to do on their own.

That’s why we have the government spending about 0.85 trillion dollars a year on health care and 0.75 trillion dollars a year on education. You could look it up.

Here’s a fearless prediction. We are going to have to give up the whole idea of government-run education and health care and go back to paying for it ourselves.

Because the only thing that a government can do—or should do—is run a war. Oh, and catch criminals.

Here’s libertarian John Stossel talking about Whole Foods and how they switched from a low-deductible health plan to a high-deductible health plan for their employees. They put the difference, about $1,500 a year, into Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) for their employees. HSAs are tax-sheltered accounts like IRAs. Writes Stossel:

CEO John Mackey told me that when he went to the new system, "Our costs went way down."

Most important, since employees control the money, their behavior changed. Whole Foods workers started asking "how much things cost," Mackey said.

Yes, but when people have to think about how much it costs before they go to the doctor won’t they skimp on health care?

Harvard Business School professor Regina Herzlinger says studies show that "people who have these high-deductible health-insurance policies take a lot better care of themselves. They have more yearly physicals. Because they’re saying, ’If I keep myself healthy, in the long run, I’m going to be spending less money.’"

Republican politicians dare not tell us this, and Democratic politicians will fight it to the last taxpayer, but you are going to be paying for your own health care in the future.

And my guess is that we’ll be paying for education as well.

And that’s a good thing. Because the most soul-destroying thing in America today is the K-16 compulsory bums-on-seats government education system. If we had to pay for education, we’d be out of there in a flash.

Why spend money on stuff you don’t need and don’t like?

Sphere: Related Content |

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

TAGS

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

mysql close 0