Would You Cash Our Check? And You Will Do It.

So I drove down to Fear’s Cape with my dad in a U-Haul this weekend to move a bunch of heavy furniture. I generally like to use drive time with my dad to bounce some of my political ideas and beliefs off him to a.) judge how crazy I am, and b.) try to gently nudge him leftward. The topic of the day was health policy.

Here were my proposals. First, I suggested that the government offer everyone a voucher to buy a gym membership at qualifying gyms (i.e., gyms that meet certain sensible requirements in terms of facilities and availability of a wide range of exercise programs, etc.). Regular exercise can obviously go a long way towards reducing the prevalence of very costly and highly unpleasant chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Judging by personal experience, it has a noticeable effect on mental health as well. The government could very feasibly make the money spent on the vouchers back (especially if we had a single-payer health system where the government was on the hook for all the medical care that would later have to be provided) in reduced chronic care costs down the road. But even in the (unlikely, I think) event that it didn’t quite make its money back, it would still probably be worth it, as it would surely significantly improve the quality of life for many people. After all, one of the functions of government should be to spend money in such a way as to improve the life of its citizens. If we’re out a few bones preventing heart attacks and strokes I’m ok with that.

The question then becomes – if it’s such a good idea to make widespread exercise a policy priority, why not just make it mandatory? Even under the voucher system, you’d probably have to keep track of how often the voucher recipient actually goes to the gym and assess penalties for people who never go – otherwise the government would be just wasting its money paying gyms for nothing. So we’re already taking attendance and penalizing absenteeism. And any time you rely on subsidies to induce people to voluntarily do something that’s for their own good, you’ll still get some people who, for whatever reason, just don’t do it. It’s analogous to one of the problems with Obama’s “no mandate” health plan – under that plan we can still expect that a good number of people will simply act irrationally and not take advantage of the subsidies. Does it not make sense just to make these people do it? It will, on balance, make their own lives better and most likely reduce the costs of health care for all of us.

This may strike people as kind of authoritarian (sorta like mandatory gym class for our entire lives, with Mr. Burdsall scolding full-grown adult slackers). But if the benefits are as large as I suspect they may be, it still may make sense. And who knows, maybe by forcing the population into regular exercise we could develop USSR-style global athletic dominance. That’s gotta count for something. Winning a FIFA World Cup, a world rugby championship, and a world cricket title (on top of our dominance in traditional U.S. sports) would establish us as the Greatest Nation in History.

My second proposal was that we subsidize certain health care procedures. The idea dawned on me when I read that the French health care system (very sensibly) charges no co-pay or deductible for 30 kinds of preventative care services. But colonoscopies, prostate exams, and gynecological exams are still highly unpleasant, despite their absolute medical necessity. Some people avoid these procedures even when their insurance covers them completely. So “free” probably isn’t good enough to establish complete compliance. Maybe it would be worth it to give people a $50-$100 subsidy for such necessary exams. Once again, this is the way to go if we are committed to the idea of getting people to do things intended for their own good voluntarily through subsidies. We could always just make them do it and assess fines for failure to do so.

What do people think? I tend to lean towards the authoritarian method, but I could be convinced otherwise. And yes, I know the authoritarian method would be totally politically impossible. So would absolutely everything else I advocate on this Blague. I’m more interested in the question of what would be best in a political vacuum.

Attn: McGroinald lovers

Suck on what Rutherford Mudcock has to say about Barnacle X. O'Barnacle

Obama: Secret Skull and Bones Cold War Dictator

Geez it's amazing what kind of crap is out there... this from the blog of an ex-spook who fervently supports Clinton because Obama is an "African Arab."

http://www.lulu.com/content/2325554