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?

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

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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

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

Hugo on Genius

“Tear down theory, poetic systems� No more rules, no more models� Genius conjures up rather than learns� ” —Victor Hugo
C�sar Gra�a, Bohemian versus Bourgeois

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

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

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

Postmodernism

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ’merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy

Faith and Politics

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable... [1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006

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

Religion, Property, and Family

But the only religions that have survived are those which support property and the family. Thus the outlook for communism, which is both anti-property and anti-family, (and also anti-religion), is not promising.
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit

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

US Life in 1842

Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

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