Nov 10
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Wedlock as the Ultimate Health Protector
The Family in America Journal – Summer 2010
Prescribing Poison: Why ObamaCare Delivers the Wrong Family Medicine
Bryce J. Christensen, Ph.D.
“When it comes to the cost of health care,” President Obama declared in 2009, “this much is clear: the status quo is unsustainable for families, businesses and government. America spends nearly 50 percent more per person on health care than any other country.” Americans indeed heard a great many ideas from the Obama administration to reduce the staggering cost of care: establishing a public health-insurance program and then negotiating discounts with medical providers serving those insured by that program; reducing waste and fraud in medical care; investing in wellness initiatives that combat obesity, sedentary lifestyle, and smoking; guaranteeing access to preventative medicine; requiring transparent pricing of medical services; reducing unnecessary diagnostic tests; cutting administrative costs—and the list goes on. Indeed, Democratic Rep. John B. Larson of Connecticut indicated that lawmakers were casting their nets widely in searching for ways to contain runaway health-care costs. “All ideas are on the table,” he said, “even the bad ones.”
The need to rein in health-care costs has indeed grown urgent. National expenditures have risen from $28 billion in 1960 to more than $2.5 trillion in 2009.1 Even if numbers are adjusted for inflation, Americans have witnessed more than just a dramatic escalation of health-care costs. This has been an explosion. Yet despite claims to the contrary, the Obama administration and its allies never put all ideas for dealing with this explosion on the table. Indeed, some very good ideas—namely, those that would rein in health-care costs by reinforcing marriage and family life—never appeared on the Obama administration’s list at all.
Moreover, some measures that the Obama team vigorously endorsed—and now is enacting—exacerbate the health-care crisis by further weakening marriage and family life. Congressman Larson was thus perhaps revealing more than he intended when he acknowledged that some bad ideas were “on the table” when the Democrats framed their health-care reform. For close scrutiny of the Obama administration’s effort in championing health-care reform reveals a fundamental animus toward family ties that are essential to safeguarding good health and to providing care. This animus can only mean that President Obama and his allies care more about enlarging their political power than they do about reducing the burdens of health care. Only such animus can explain the presence of some very bad ideas in the Obama formula for health care—and the absence of some much-needed good ones. In the long run, this policy prescription can only prove toxic to the nation’s health.
The possibility of checking health-care costs by renewing marriage and family life would likely strike the Obama administration as absurd and irrelevant. It shouldn’t. A growing body of epidemiological evidence identifies an enduring marriage and an intact family as powerful safeguards of health. What is more, researchers report that even when illness does strike the married couple or the intact family, those afflicted can often receive care at home rather than in a hospital and in many cases can even do without the costly care of the sort that only professionals can provide. In contrast, researchers find that adults living without a spouse and children living without both parents are often those who most desperately need professional care in the costly setting of the hospital.
Wedlock as the Ultimate Health Protector