apocryph.org Notes to my future self

Open letter to Virginia’s Senate delegation

Senators Webb and Warner:

Today Senator Nelson was somehow swayed (no doubt with favors most outside Washington would consider “bribery”) towards support of Senator Reid’s as-yet-unread legislation to “reform” 1/6th of the nation’s economy to the tune of $1 trillion in debt and a sweeping expansion of federal power over individual health care choices.  As both of Virginia’s senators you have expressed at least tentative support for this extra-constitutional usurpation with claims of lowered healthcare costs, improved health insurance coverage, and higher quality medical care.  I submit to you these goals cannot be achieved with anything resembling the Democratic majority’s attempts thus far.

I have not yet seen the Senate’s latest attempt to “fix” healthcare, as Reid’s bill emerged from a smoky back room just yesterday, thus I cannot offer criticisms of specific provisions of the bill for your consideration.  However if previous Senate attempts at “reform” legislation are any guide, Senator Reid’s latest will achieve none of the stated goals of “reform”, and instead will bring potentially ruinous consequences down upon us all.  Allow me to address some of my objections to what is sure to be in the next permutation of the bill up for a vote this coming week:

* Most offensive of the provisions is a federal mandate forcing individuals to buy health insurance.  Whether this mandate is dressed up as some sort favorable tax treatment for insurance premiums or left naked as an overtly coercive regulation carrying with it the penalty of law, we have fallen far from our roots as a constitutional republic.  What would the founders of our country, not to mention the jurists presiding over the first 150 years of our legal history, make of such an extra-constitutional compulsion?  I daresay they would take a dim view indeed.

What right have you as my elected representatives, or have the unaccountable federal bureaucrats to whom the Executive delegates, to compel me to spend my money to purchase a product or service?  Where in the US Constitution did we the people delegate to you our elected government the power to force us to spend our money with anyone, let alone insurance companies squirming under the boot heel of federal regulators?  It is an outrage which, if perpetrated, will no doubt be regarded as a pivotal moment in our country’s history.

* Next on the egregiousness list is a new regulatory regime imposed upon the health insurance industry in the name of controlling costs and keeping premiums affordable.  These schemes call to mind the Randian legislator who in his hubris believes himself capable of simply legislating away problems of “unfair” wages, “dog eat dog” industrial practices, an “unequal” opportunities without consideration of unintended consequences or any regard for the liberty of the subjects of his benevolent ministrations.

Among the regulatory schemes proposed are measures restricting variations in premiums between the  young and healthy and the old and infirmed, mandates requiring coverage of a long and sure to grow list of procedures, and in some bills even a profitability cap requiring a minimum percentage of premiums go to paying claims.

To illustrate the ruin that will come from this short-sighted scheme, allow me to share with you some details of my particular, but in no way unique, situation.  As one who is young, healthy, and requires only coverage against catastrophic medical bills, these ‘reforms’ will cause my health care costs to skyrocket.  Today I pay about $110/month for my high-deductible insurance plan, along with tax-free contributions to my health savings account.  If I need a heart transplant or brain surgery, I can pay the first $5000 from my accumulated tax-free health savings, after which my insurance covers the rest.  Odds are I won’t need expensive medical services any time soon, so I can accumulate my own savings for my own health care on my own terms.

Under the new regime, Federal bureaucrats will be presumed to know better than I what’s best for me.  I will be forced to pay into a more traditional health insurance scheme which will provide coverage for a wide range of procedures I don’t care about.  My premiums will rise not only to cover these additional unwanted procedures and lower deductibles, but much more so because of the restriction of the “unfair” insurance company practice of setting premiums in accordance with risk.  In effect my financial freedom will be curtailed to the tune of thousands of dollars a year so the old and infirmed are spared the “unfair” experience of paying for insurance in proportion to what they will consume.  If I choose to defy the Congress and the executive bureaucrats, I will face Federal sanctions including fines and God knows what else.

Sadly, it’s not as though you’ve no way of knowing this is coming.  Individual coverage mandates and government-set “minimum” coverage standards have been tried with the same results in Massachusetts and elsewhere.  Be assured the presence of 535 legislators and an army of Federal bureaucrats won’t make it go any better.

* The third and–due only to verbosity considerations, final–error I wish to call to your attention is the ruinous fiscal consequence of this grand experiment in government social engineering.  The CBO’s estimates for these schemes ranges from $800 billion to over $1 trillion for the next ten years, and that’s with absurd assumptions like scheduled Medicare cuts being permitted to take place, and government cost projections being accurate.  Historical evidence suggests the real number will be well in excess of $1 trillion.

Federal finances are already in terrible disarray, particularly after the massive bailout scheme to spare us the horror of 10% unemployment and the bankruptcy of institutions too big to fail.  Medicare is already going broke with no solution in sight.  Now the Congress would pile a nearly unimaginable amount of debt atop an already hopeless mountain.    Surely you must recognize this is the sort of thing that precedes the fall of empires.

You are both intelligent and accomplished men; I’ve no doubt you recognize politically convenient financial legerdemain when you see it, so you must realize this ‘reform’ scheme carries with it a devastating cost.  You must therefore believe the potentially ruinous economic consequences, not to mention the serious blow to our liberty, to be worth the price.  I cannot for the life of me understand why.

What contempt or disdain for deliberative democratic governance is required to participate in an effort to ram this ruinously expensive and coercive legislation through Congress by the barest of partisan majorities?  What disinterest in the concerns of constituents and the American people must one possess to at least tacitly support this effort at a time when a majority of Americans oppose the plans put forward thus far?  Shouldn’t a wholesale restructuring of our economy along statist and command-and-control lines happen in the light of day, with deliberation, or at the very least with time to read and evaluate the bill?

I’m not rich, or powerful, or a special interest, or a shill for insurance companies, or a Republican partisan.  I am a young professional Virginian who loves his liberty and reads his Constitution and votes his conscience, and I make you this promise: if any member of the Virginia congressional delegation wins re-election after voting to support a health care bill that takes some of my freedom and more of my money in the name of  ’reform’, it will be in spite of my dedication of time and money to their opposition.  Understand that this isn’t like a promise of open and transparent government, or thoughtful and deliberative legislating; this is a promise that will be kept.

Sincerely,

Adam Nelson