Denver 9/12 Rally: Freedom Forever

by Ari Armstrong | 8:57 am, September 13, 2009

In my speech at the Denver 9/12 rally, I discussed the fundamental moral and political choices our nation faces. To illustrate these themes I described how the problem of pre-existing health conditions, and the resulting difficulties of buying insurance, is primarily a product of political controls, starting with tax-driven, non-portable, employer-paid insurance.

See People’s Press Collective for the report.

Lu Busse, chair of The 9.12 Project Colorado Leadership Team, said the proper response to the cry, “health reform now,” is “freedom forever.” Of course, real health reform means reestablishing freedom in medicine, so the two goals are wholly consistent.

Chuck Moe:

Amy Oliver:

Jon Caldara:

A Million-Plus Marchers at Washington, DC 9-12 Tea Party?

by T.L. James | 3:33 pm, September 12, 2009

Stephen Green of Pajamas Media has live reports from throughout the day on today’s big Tea Party rally in DC. And check out this picture of the rally taken by Mary Katherine Ham [via Instapundit]. Who knew it would be so big? Just back now from Denver’s 9-12 rally – pictures to follow shortly. My [...]

Obama Was Against the Mandate Before He Was For It

by Ari Armstrong | 9:00 am, September 11, 2009

Back on February 26, 2008, Barack Obama criticized Hillary Clinton for offering the same health insurance mandate that he endorsed just two days ago. (Thanks to Adam Eidelberg for looking up the transcript of the primary debate.)

Obama was right to question the mandate when Clinton proposed it. I’ve written more about the matter elsewhere (such as here.) For now, as a prelude to the before-and-after Obama quotes, I’ll summarize the main arguments against the mandate.

1. People have the right to choose which products to buy. It is immoral for politicians to force people to buy politically-controlled products.

2. The main reason some fraction of “the young and healthy” currently decide not to buy insurance is that politicians try to force the young and healthy to subsidize other people’s health care through jacked up insurance premiums. This is especially true in employer-paid insurance, and it is also true for directly purchased insurance due to state benefit mandates.

3. Obama’s pretense that the mandate solves the problem of forcing “the rest of us to pick up the tab” is laughable. The entire point of the mandate is to force some people to pick up the tab of other people’s health care through higher insurance premiums. That’s why Obama must force people to buy it. Without this coercion, Obama’s other insurance controls would dramatically increase costs of premiums and thus the numbers without insurance.

4. Real free-market reforms would lower the cost of insurance premiums so that more people could afford it. Roll back controls that jack up premiums. Expand Health Savings Accounts so that people can buy lower-cost insurance (as well as routine care) directly with pre-tax money.

5. The main reason why some people rely on expensive emergency room treatment, rather than seek out less costly alternatives, is that the federal government forces emergency rooms to offer care without compensation. That policy is wrong, and it predictably introduces perverse incentives.

6. People without insurance do not necessarily force others to fund their treatment. Many fund their treatment out of pocket. Again the solution is to legalize insurance they can afford and want to buy.

7. Mandated insurance is expensive insurance. Obama wants to force insurers to cover more routine care, continuing the federal push to pervert insurance into pre-paid medical care. When routine care is “free” (or nearly so) at the point of service, patients have practically no incentive to monitor costs. Also, under a mandate special interests continually try to get more services covered, jacking up premiums, as has happened in Massachusetts.

With that background, let us turn Obama’s position on mandates, then and now:

Obama then:

I have endured, over the course of this campaign, repeated negative mail from Senator Clinton in Iowa, in Nevada, and other places, suggesting that I want to leave 15 million people out.

According to Senator Clinton, that is accurate. I dispute it and I think it is inaccurate. On the other hand, I don’t fault Senator Clinton for wanting to point out what she thinks is an advantage to her plan.

The reason she thinks that there are more people covered under her plan than mine is because of a mandate. That is not a mandate for the government to provide coverage to everybody. It is a mandate that every individual purchase health care.

And the mailing that we put out accurately indicates that the main difference between Senator Clinton’s plan and mine is the fact that she would force, in some fashion, individuals to purchase health care.

If it was not affordable, she would still presumably force them to have it, unless there is a hardship exemption, as they’ve done in Massachusetts, which leaves 20 percent of the uninsured out. And if that’s the case, then, in fact, her claim that she covers everybody is not accurate.

Now, Senator Clinton has not indicated how she would enforce this mandate. She hasn’t indicated what level of subsidy she would provide to assure that it was, in fact, affordable. And so it is entirely legitimate for us to point out these differences.

The Democrats now have “indicated” how they would “enforce this mandate:” they would subject defectors to hefty fines.

While Obama claimed “the plan I’m proposing will cost around $900 billion over ten years,” he wasn’t specific about how much he would subsidize individuals.

Obama now:

For those individuals and small businesses who still cannot afford the lower-priced insurance available in the exchange, we will provide tax credits, the size of which will be based on your need… [F]or those Americans who can’t get insurance today because they have pre-existing medical conditions, we will immediately offer low-cost coverage that will protect you against financial ruin if you become seriously ill…

Now, even if we provide these affordable options, there may be those — particularly the young and healthy — who still want to take the risk and go without coverage. There may still be companies that refuse to do right by their workers. The problem is, such irresponsible behavior costs all the rest of us money. If there are affordable options and people still don’t sign up for health insurance, it means we pay for those people’s expensive emergency room visits. If some businesses don’t provide workers health care, it forces the rest of us to pick up the tab when their workers get sick, and gives those businesses an unfair advantage over their competitors. And unless everybody does their part, many of the insurance reforms we seek — especially requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions — just can’t be achieved.

That’s why under my plan, individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance — just as most states require you to carry auto insurance. Likewise, businesses will be required to either offer their workers health care, or chip in to help cover the cost of their workers. There will be a hardship waiver for those individuals who still cannot afford coverage, and 95 percent of all small businesses, because of their size and narrow profit margin, would be exempt from these requirements. But we cannot have large businesses and individuals who can afford coverage game the system by avoiding responsibility to themselves or their employees.

As I have noted, it is the mandate (not the public option) that defines Obama’s current policy. Mandated insurance is morally wrong and destined to generate bad consequences. We do not need more mandates. We need more liberty.

Mandate, Not Public Option, Defines Obamacare

by Ari Armstrong | 1:39 pm, September 10, 2009

Rather than “hope and change,” Barack Obama offers a warmed-over Republican policy — Romneycare — that has already failed in Massachusetts. The core of Obama’s fake reform (described most recently in his address to Congress) is not, as many conservatives suggest, the “public option.” It is instead the proposal to force people to buy politically-controlled insurance. (For details on the Massachusetts fiasco, which Obama hopes to replicate on a national scale, see the articles by Paul Hsieh and Michael Cannon.)

It is the mandate that ties together the various tenets of Obamacare, particularly insurance controls (regarding coverage and pre-existing conditions) and expanded subsidies.

Regarding pre-existing conditions, I’ve pointed out, “Forcing insurers to ignore pre-existing conditions means allowing consumers to wait until they get sick to buy insurance… The logical consequence of forcing insurers to ignore pre-existing conditions is to force everyone to purchase insurance…”

Obama made the same point in his speech: “Unless everybody does their part [and purchases insurance under compulsion], many of the insurance reforms we seek — especially requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions — just can’t be achieved.” Just so.

Nevermind the fact that federal policies largely created the problems of uncovered pre-existing conditions.

Obama admits, “More and more Americans worry that if you move, lose your job, or change your job, you’ll lose your health insurance too.” But why is health insurance (and not any other sort of insurance) tied to employment for most Americans? It is because of federal tax distortions that drive expensive, non-portable, employer-paid insurance.

As I’ve noted (and again), the vast net of continuously changing insurance controls also helps to effectively outlaw stable, long-term policies that would remedy the problem of pre-existing conditions.

For more on this issue, please see Paul Hsieh’s outstanding article, “How the Freedom to Contract Protects Insurability.”

Obama wants to force insurers to ignore pre-existing conditions and also force insurers to cover preventative care (which would, incidentally, outlaw my high-deductible plan and force my wife and me to buy dramatically more costly insurance). The inevitable result of such controls is to jack up insurance premiums (leaving aside Obama’s fantasy that giving people more “free” health care will somehow curb costs).

Mandated insurance requires expanded subsidies. After all, you can’t force somebody to purchase a product that they literally cannot afford. If Obama follows the lead of Republicans, his “tax credits” will in many cases be direct subsidies.

Obama hopes to cheat a little on his mandate, claiming “there will be a hardship waiver for those individuals who still cannot afford coverage.” (Whether you can “afford” this politically-manipulated “coverage” will be determined by the federal government.) Apparently Obama would subsidize these “hardship” cases through some combination of tax-funded welfare and tax-funded insurance.

With or without the “public option,” the core of Obamacare remains the same: force everyone (or nearly everyone) to buy insurance, federally control what insurance people can buy (making it more expensive), and forcibly transfer more wealth to pay for health.

NPR Gets Liberty On the Rocks Reaction to Obama’s Health Speech

by Ari Armstrong | 8:21 am, September 10, 2009

NPR reporter Jeff Brady watched Barack Obama’s health address to Congress with members of the Denver Tech Liberty on the Rocks. He interviewed numerous participants and quoted three in his report.

Amanda Teresi, founder of Liberty On the Rocks, explained why forcing insurers to ignore pre-existing conditions runs contrary to the basic purpose of insurance: “The idea is that it’s health insurance. And the whole concept of insurance is that you get it before you get sick, or before something happens to you. It would be the equivalent of not having any car insurance, hitting a tree, and then calling Geico and saying you want to sign up. It doesn’t make sense.”

(I’ve written a first and second article on the topic.)

T. L. James suggested that Obama’s comments about tort reform won’t amount to much. James told Brady, “Tort lawyers fund an important part of the Democratic power base, their funding base for their elections. There is no way that he’s going to do anything that’s going to turn them away from the Democratic party.”

Finally, Orin Ray said he didn’t think Obama’s speech really changed anybody’s mind.

Brady did a nice job with his brief report. However, I wish he had mentioned the more fundamental issues. The fact that Obama wants to force everybody to buy politically-controlled insurance is a huge deal, as is the fact that Obama wants to expand subsidies. Nor did Brady mention the political causes of today’s problems in medicine, or that Massachusetts has already tried — and failed — to successfully implement Obama’s key “reforms.” (I discussed all of these issues with Brady.) Yet Brady didn’t have much time for his portion of the report, and he was basically fair.

Obama Wrong About Mandatory Auto Insurance

by Ari Armstrong | 11:19 pm, September 9, 2009

I watched Barack Obama’s address on health policy tonight on television at Liberty On the Rocks at the Denver Tech Center. Both NPR and Fox 31 sent reporters to cover the speech and the free-market response to it. I’ll have more to say about the speech in coming days. For now, I want to correct but one of Obama’s remarks:

“That’s why under my plan, individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance — just as most states require you to carry auto insurance.”

It is simply not true that states “require you to carry auto insurance.” Rather, you must buy auto insurance (or face fines) only if you drive an automobile on politically operated roads.

For example, Colorado’s statute 10-4-619 states that “compulsory coverage” applies to “every owner of a motor vehicle who operates the motor vehicle on the public highways of this state or who knowingly permits the operation of the motor vehicle on the public highways of this state.”

In other words, if you don’t own a motor vehicle, or you don’t drive your vehicle on “public highways,” you aren’t required to buy auto insurance.

It is indeed interesting that Obama sees a politically controlled industry as the model for health care.

Obama’s proposal to force everybody to buy politically controlled insurance is not like the requirement to buy auto insurance for public highways. Under Obama’s proposal, there is no escape and no exception. If you don’t buy insurance that politicians and their appointed bureaucrats approve for you, you face hefty fines. If you want to self-insure, or if you don’t like the politically-approved insurance, that’s tough. You will be forced to buy it. Because Obama is all about choice, competition, and freedom. And two plus two equals five.

September 10 Update: Wesword’s Michael Roberts picked up on the NPR coverage of Liberty On the Rocks and also quoted this blog post. As I pointed out in the comments, this post made a delimited point quickly. I’ve written much more about mandated insurance elsewhere.

Reid Errs on International Health Comparisons

by Ari Armstrong | 11:26 am, September 9, 2009

Tonight President Obama will renew his pitch for more political control of medicine. One important part of the debate is how the U.S. compares to other nations. Recently the Denver Post republished an article from the Washington Post by T. R. Reid on the matter.

As my dad and I have pointed out (and again), the U.S. outperforms various European nations by measures such as cancer survival and access to technology.

As is also well documented, nations with the most severe political controls of medicine ration care (see also Patient Power). To take just one recent example, see the following article in the British Telegraph: “Sentenced to death on the NHS: Patients with terminal illnesses are being made to die prematurely under an NHS scheme to help end their lives, leading doctors have warned.”

However, the fundamental choice is not between the current American system and some system similar to that of some other nation. The fact is that American medicine is already mostly controlled by politicians, and in that respect it already resembles the politically controlled systems throughout Canada and Europe. To the degree that American medicine fails, it fails because politicians have mucked it up. Where health care in other nations succeeds, that is largely to the extent that it retains some elements of freedom and borrows the successes of American innovations.

Reid definitely comes at the matter with the presumption that it’s the government’s job to ensure “universal coverage.” It is not. Rather, it is the government’s job to protect individual rights, including rights to offer and purchase health care and insurance on a free market, by voluntary exchange. The fact that government has violated rather than protected our rights is what has created the medical mess in which we now live. (For a historical survey, see the article by Lin Zinser and Paul Hsieh.)

If government would protect our rights rather than interfere in medicine, health care would be better in quality, lower in cost, and widely accessible. It is ironically the political crusade for “universal coverage” and care that leads to skyrocketing costs, rationing, and widespread difficulties in getting good health care.

Part of Reid’s confusion is to treat politically controlled insurance and health providers as “private.” If politicians control something, it is not “private” in any meaningful sense, even if the ownership is nominally so.

With an eye toward Reid’s mistaken premises, then, let’s evaluate his arguments.

Reid helpfully concedes that U.S. health is hardly a free market:

In some ways, health care is less “socialized” overseas than in the United States. Almost all Americans sign up for government insurance (Medicare) at age 65. In Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, seniors stick with private insurance plans for life.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is one of the planet’s purest examples of government-run health care.

However, Reid seems to think this counts as a reason for expanding political controls in the U.S.

Reid grants that Canadian health features waiting lines. However, he claims, “studies by the Commonwealth Fund and others report that many nations — Germany, Britain, Austria — outperform the United States on measures such as waiting times for appointments and for elective surgeries.”

Reid simply misstates the survey results.

Here’s what the Commonwealth Fund actually says, contrary to Reid’s summary: “The U.S. patients reported relatively longer waiting times for doctor appointments when they were sick, but relatively shorter waiting times to be seen at the emergency department, see a specialist, and have elective surgery.”

The survey also notes that the difference is partly attributable to the fact that some Americans lack health insurance, and this is primarily a problem resulting from political controls of insurance, which drive up costs.

It would have been helpful had Reid pointed out some of the other findings of the survey.

On the matter of doctor visits, the question is “Waited 6 days or longer for a doctor appointment (last time sick or needed medical attention.” Australia came in at 10 percent of surveyed “sicker adults,” Canada at 36 percent, Germany at 13 percent, New Zealand at 3 percent, the UK at 15 percent, and the U.S. at 23 percent. Notice that this question pertains to a patient’s scheduling of a doctor visit, not necessarily the availability of doctors.

On the question of waiting four or more hours in the emergency room, only Germany beats the U.S.

“Waited 4 weeks or longer to see a specialist?” The U.S. comes in at 23 percent, compared to 57 percent in Canada and 60 percent in the UK.

“Waited 4 months of longer for elective surgery?” The U.S. stands at 8 percent, while Canada is at 33 percent and the UK at 41 percent.

All that said, such surveys are inherently limited in reliability. For example, people in different cultures might have very different ideas about when a doctor’s visit is “needed.” And people are not likely to try to see a specialist or get elective surgery if they think their attempts will be fruitless, so the U.S. might perform even better than the survey results indicate.

But, again, it is not enough just to compare the U.S. against other nations. We have to get at the underlying causes of problems in the U.S. and abroad.

Writing for Reason, Shikha Dalmia points out:

The fact of the matter is that America’s health care system is like a free market in the same way that Madonna is like a virgin — i.e. in fiction only. If anything, the U.S. system has many more similarities than differences with France and Germany. [A]part from England, most European countries have a public-private blend, not unlike what we have in the U.S.

Dalmia points out that government pays for nearly half of all health care dollars in the U.S. and “directly covers about a third of all Americans through Medicare (the public program for the elderly) and Medicaid (the public program for the poor).” The U.S. also forces emergency rooms to provide care without compensation.

Dalmia adds, “This is not radically different from France, where the government offers everyone basic public coverage, of course — but a whopping 90% of the French also buy supplemental private insurance to help pay for the 20% to 40% of their tab that the public plan doesn’t cover.”

Moreover, a significant minority of Germans “opt out of the public system altogether and rely solely on private coverage.”

What about rationing? Dalmia points out:

Struggling with exploding costs, the French government has tried several times—only to back off in the face of a public outcry—to prod doctors into using only standardized treatments. In 1994, it started imposing fines of up to roughly $4,000 on doctors who deviated from “mandatory practice guidelines.” It switched from this “sticks” to a “carrots” approach four years later, and tried handing bonuses to doctors who adhered to the guidelines.

Meanwhile, in Germany, “sickness funds” — the equivalent of insurance companies—have imposed strict budgets on doctors for prescription drugs. Doctors who exceed their cap are simply denied reimbursement, something that forces them to prescribe less effective invasive procedures for problems that would have been better treated with drugs. But the most potent form of rationing in France and Germany—and indeed much of Europe — is not overt but covert: delayed access to cutting-edge drugs and therapies that become available to American patients years in advance.

Cato’s Michael Tanner has written both an op-ed and a longer policy paper about international comparisons. He points out:

Those countries with national health care systems that work better, such as France, the Netherlands and Switzerland, are successful to the degree that they incorporate market mechanisms such as competition, cost-consciousness, market prices, and consumer choice, and eschew centralized government control.

In France, for example, co-payments run between 10 and 40 percent, and physicians can balance bill over and above government reimbursement rates, something not allowed in the U.S. Medicare program. On average, French patients pay roughly as much out of pocket as do Americans. The Swiss government pays a smaller percentage of health care spending than does the U.S.

In his longer paper, Tanner goes into more detail on the health policies of particular countries.

Reid also argues that American insurance, which he laughably calls “free enterprise,” has higher administrative overhead than other countries. I do not doubt that this is true despite the fact that Reid is probably ignoring the relevant administrative costs elsewhere (such as tax compliance). But this is only true because American politicians have totally screwed up the insurance market, turning insurance into expensive pre-paid health care. (See my article, “What is Health Insurance?”

Finally, Reid argues that it’s “cruel” if politicians don’t force insurers to ignore pre-existing conditions. I’ve addressed the matter in a first and second article. The upshot is that insurers and consumers have the right to enter voluntary contracts, and insurance controls create bad incentives and higher costs, leading to cries for more controls.

In general, Reid attempts to make his case by omitting the relevant facts.

About Those Awful Right-Wing Protest Signs…

by T.L. James | 8:01 am, September 7, 2009

I missed this when it was first published, but the Activist Conservative does a nice job of demolishing the left’s faux outrage over Tea Party and health reform town hall signs. A frequent complaint by those on the left who would make pretense that the tea parties are insignificant is the whiny “where were you [...]

Free Exchange Should Set Insurance Premiums

by Ari Armstrong | 12:13 pm, September 3, 2009

Should health insurance companies charge people with pre-existing conditions or known health risks more?

Lawrence Jones of Conifer wrote a thoughtful letter for the August 25 Denver Post arguing that higher rates are unfair for conditions beyond one’s control. I thought Jones’s letter deserved a full reply.

Jones writes:

Letter-writer William Hinckley [see the August 20 letter] thinks that charging higher insurance premiums to people with pre-existing medical conditions is akin to charging higher house insurance rates to dimwitted folks who knowingly choose to live in fire traps. People don’t choose to get diabetes. People don’t choose to have genetic predispositions to cancer.

Those who knowingly make risky life choices, whether to live in fire-prone shacks or to smoke tobacco, should certainly pay higher premiums as a result of their choices. But why should the boy with leukemia, the woman with breast cancer, the young athlete with diabetes? Why should the innocent be punished for wanting access to health care just because they actually need it?

Jones’s fundamental mistake is to ignore the rights of insurers and treat insurance as a collectively owned good. Insurance is a product sold on the market that properly belongs to its producers. Insurers have every right to set the terms of insurance policies, including rates. And consumers are free to buy an insurer’s product or not. The government’s only proper role is to enforce insurance contracts and prevent fraud, whether by the insurer or the consumer.

Politically controlled insurance rates violate the rights of both insurers and their customers. The key characteristic of free markets is voluntary exchange. A producer cannot sell a product without a willing customer, and a customer cannot buy something that no producer wishes to sell. Producers and customers have the right to reach mutually agreeable terms, free from force.

What Jones ignores is that forcing insurers to charge unhealthy people lower rates means that insurers must charge healthier people higher rates, or risk bankruptcy. The typical result of Jones’s policy is that young, healthier, less-wealthy workers trying to get ahead in life must subsidize everyone else.

Jones, then, implicitly means that he wants politicians to force insurers to charge healthy people more. Such political controls are a big reason why insurance premiums cost so much today, and why both Democrats such as Barack Obama and Republicans such as Mitt Romney call for mandated insurance. Some young healthy people decline to subsidize other people’s health through politically-manipulated insurance premiums, so they must be forced to do it, the reasoning goes.

Jones misses a number of other points as well. For example, he ignores the fact that politicians have effectively outlawed long-term insurance contracts, as I point out in a recent article on pre-existing conditions.

Of course insurers should NOT charge people with health conditions higher premiums — IF those people bought long-term insurance before they developed the conditions. But long-term insurance contracts, on the whole, simply are not possible in today’s political climate. Real health reform entails restoring a free market in health insurance, so that insurers are more competitive, more responsive to customers, and more free to offer useful products.

The entire purpose of health insurance, as I’ve argued, is to allow people to voluntarily pool their resources to protect against unexpected risks. If a risk is expected, such as if somebody knows prior to getting insurance that they have cancer, then the risk is simply not properly insurable.

Jones suggests that the “innocent” are “punished” when politicians do not force others to subsidize their care through higher insurance premiums. But this presumes that healthier people are somehow guilty. They are not. A free exchange between an insurer and a customer does not somehow “punish” a party outside that exchange.

Does this mean that people with pre-existing conditions and no health insurance cannot get health care? Obviously not. The idea that all health care must be funded through health insurance is ludicrous. The wealthy may fund their own health care out of pocket. The poor may look for voluntary charity, whether provided directly by hospitals or indirectly through charity groups. (Obviously today people have access to a wide array of health welfare programs. I favor gradually replacing welfare with strictly voluntary charity.)

Jones is also partly wrong about which diseases are impacted by personal behaviors. He mentions cancer and diabetes as examples. Yet both cancer and diabetes are often largely caused by one’s choices.

The American Diabetes Association states, “Type 1 and type 2 diabetes have different causes. Yet two factors are important in both. First, you must inherit a predisposition to the disease. Second, something in your environment must trigger diabetes.” What you eat can dramatically impact your likelihood of developing diabetes, as it can dramatically impact your ability to deal with the disease.

Likewise, cancer is partly genetically determined. For example, some women have genes that make breast cancer more likely. Nevertheless, our foods, activities, and chemical exposures can dramatically impact our risks of cancer.

I have two general points to make about this. To the extent that disease is impacted by personal behaviors, it is a very bad idea for political policies to encourage damaging behaviors. Laws forcing insurers to fund pre-existing conditions reduce the incentive of people take care of themselves. The inevitable result is more disease.

The second major point is that one person’s unluckiness does not impose some sort of duty on a more-lucky person. The person without a genetic predisposition to get cancer is free to donate funds to treat cancer patients but should not be forced, under threat of imprisonment, to do so. The proper purpose of insurance is to protect ourselves against unexpected risks, not to equalize luck after the fact.

Health care is not a right. It is not some collectively owned good to be distributed by political whim. Health providers and health consumers have a right to negotiate mutually beneficial trades and to donate whatever they wish to charity. It is that right which government must consistently protect, if we value or lives, our liberties, and our health.

Debunking Health Care Reform Myths

by Ari Armstrong | 10:18 am, August 31, 2009

The following article originally was published by the August 31 edition of Grand Junction’s Free Press.

Debunking health reform myths

by Linn and Ari Armstrong

Advocates of Barack Obama’s health proposals claim they want to debunk myths surrounding the health reform debate. We’re happy to oblige.

Myth #1: Opponents of Obamacare are the ones creating myths.

True, some have made exaggerated claims about “death panels.” However, rationing is indisputably part of any political health program. More subsidized health care leads to more indiscriminate use of the health system, which leads to skyrocketing costs. The inevitable “solution” is rationing.

If you think that those running a political, tax-funded health system will never deny treatment to those who claim to need it, then you are either a liar or a fool.

Myth #2: Opponents of Obamacare are “anti-health care reform.”

A recent article in the Huffington Post claims that “opponents of Democratic health care legislation” are “anti-health care reform,” which is nonsense.

What Obama offers is not “reform,” but merely more of the same sorts of political controls that caused existing problems in medicine. Continued tax distortions promoting expensive, non-portable, employer-paid insurance. More political controls that jack up insurance premiums. Probably laws outlawing low-cost, high-deductible policies. More forced wealth transfers.

Real health reform means respecting liberty and individual rights in medicine. It means respecting people’s rights to control their own resources and enter into voluntary agreements. Politicians should neither compel interactions, as through insurance mandates, nor forbid them.

The proper role of government is to enforce individual rights, which means to protect people from force and fraud and otherwise leave them free to lead their lives according to their own best judgment.

Real health reform means recognizing the individual’s moral right to his or her own life. Obama’s fake “reform” means politicians and their appointed bureaucrats telling people what to do.

Advocates of real health reform want expanded Health Savings Accounts with low-cost, high-deductible insurance, rolled back insurance controls, containment of health welfare, and tort reform.

Ironically, Obama lied in the very sentence in which he accused his opponents of lying, when he called for “an honest debate, not one dominated by willful misrepresentations and outright distortions, spread by the very folks who would benefit the most by keeping things exactly as they are.”

Don’t let Obama get away with his outright distortion that the only alternative to the existing system is a more-politicized one.

Myth #3: Opponents of Obamacare are criminals, thugs, and mobs.

Early on the morning of August 25, two people smashed eleven windows at Democratic Party Headquarters in Denver. The windows were adorned with posters endorsing Obamacare.

Democratic Chair Pat Waak quickly lashed out: “Clearly there’s been an effort on the other side to stir up hate. I think this is the consequence of it.”

Clearly Waak jumped to conclusions to demonize critics of Obamacare. Unfortunately for Waak, Denver police caught one of the alleged perpetrators.

Police arrested Maurice Schwenkler, a Democratic operative, left-wing radical, and gay-rights activist. During the last election, a Democratic 527 group paid Schwenkler $500 to campaign for a Democratic state-house candidate. Who’s “stirring up hate” now, Waak? (See PeoplesPressCollective.org for details about the story.)

It is true that some Obamacare protesters have gotten overly heated at public forums. That happens among the left and right. It is also true that the vast majority of those who oppose Obamacare are thoughtful, peaceable citizens exercising their First Amendment rights.

Myth #4: We need Obamacare to give everybody health care.

Most Americans already have great access to the best health care in the world. The biggest problem is that, due to political controls that have squashed competition and jacked up premiums, many cannot afford health insurance.

As Cato’s Michael Tanner points out, of the roughly 46 million uninsured, 12 million are eligible for existing health welfare, 10 million are non-citizen immigrants, and “most of the uninsured are young and in good health.”

Is it any wonder that some young, healthy people decline to purchase expensive insurance premiums through which politicians force them to subsidize the health care of others?

Americans understandably don’t want to let people die in the streets without care. That’s why we should expand Health Savings Accounts and roll back insurance controls — then more people could afford insurance without busting the budget. We wouldn’t need nearly as much charity if politicians would stop interfering with people’s ability to get health care.

Extensive health welfare programs exist now. Government spends nearly half of all health care dollars, especially through Medicare and Medicaid. Cover Colorado subsidizes high-risk insurance.

Ultimately, we advocate a return to voluntary charity, which remains a strong force in America even though political welfare has largely displaced it. If you think others should donate to a health charity, then persuade them, don’t hide behind armed IRS agents and threaten to throw people in prison if they don’t pay up.

We want everybody to be able get good health care. We want politicians to respect people’s rights. That is why we reject Obama’s health reform myths.

[Update: Cato's Michael Tanner debunks a fifth myth, Obama's claim that "If you like your private health insurance plan, you can keep your plan. Period." Among other things, Obamacare would outlaw high-deductible plans.]

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