Alcoholic antics cost us all in either tax dollars or increased health insurance premiums.
Story from “This is True” by Randy Cassingham, with his “tagline:”
“A SOBER ASSESSMENT: When Tom Stilwell, 20, woke up in a hospital, the British man living in Auckland, New Zealand, was told what brought him there. He had arrived at his apartment after a night out with friends to discover he was locked out. Stilwell, who lives on the 14th floor of the building, knocked on the door of the woman who lived directly above him. Despite the hour — 2:00 a.m. — and despite him being ‘a little bit tipsy,’ Geraldine Bautista, 28, let him in. Stilwell’s plan: ‘Can you please let me jump off from the balcony? I will not bother you just let me use your balcony.’ He figured he could let himself into his apartment from his own balcony just below. ‘I never thought he would really do that,’ Bautista said. ‘In my mind I thought ‘OK, I’ll just let you see that it’s really impossible.’ ’ But, she said, without saying a word he went over the rail — and fell 13 storeys to the roof of an adjacent building. He survived with internal injuries and multiple fractures, including his back and neck. Once a nurse in intensive care explained what happened, she handed Stilwell a board and a pen — he couldn’t talk thanks to tubes in his throat — and he wrote his reaction: ‘What an idiot.’ (RC/New Zealand Herald) …Funny: those are the very words of everyone who just read this.”
Bautista doesn’t understand alcoholism and, therefore, what alcoholics are capable of: anything. If she understood this, she might have stopped Stilwell. However, since the problem is alcoholism, if she had said “no” he might have simply gone next door and gotten someone else to let him jump from the balcony.
The larger problem is this and similar “idiots” wreak havoc on health systems all over the world. With most of them either socialized or government controlled, everyone pays for such follies either in higher taxes or higher insurance premiums.
How would something that hasn’t been tried in decades—a free market in health care—handle such issues? The price of coverage would be commensurate with risk—which would be much higher for those who “drink excessively,” i.e. alcoholics. Some might object such a system would unduly punish those having a genetically-rooted disease that is no fault of their own. This libertarian, one of the few who understands alcoholism as a disease and not a question of “willpower,” would respond that it’s a disease for which logical (often financial) consequences are the cure. When able to dig deep enough, every recovering alcoholic admits pain from consequences for misbehaviors got him or her to “try sobriety.” Such consequences would properly include the imposition of appropriate costs. (Therefore, the cure is a libertarian one.)
In a market in which insurers were free to try different pricing arrangements and different solutions to keeping their customers safe from disease and injury, some of the more ingenious entrepreneurs might try regular and random alcohol and other-drug testing. In the few areas in which this has been tried, rates of relapse have plunged, such as in drug courts. Should a relapse occur, either insurance coverage would end or its price would skyrocket. The power of the pocketbook should not be underestimated.
The ultimate goal is to get and keep addicts sober, which reason can’t do. Drawing lines in the sand usually works—but because we are not God and can’t read inside their drug-damaged brains, we cannot know which line will do the trick. Is it one or three DUIs? Is it loss of license—or freedom? Is it loss of friends, family or job? Is it loss of wealth and, if so, how much? Ratcheting up a price or ending coverage contractually (the customer knows the rules ahead of time), is yet one more line in the sand that would reduce the number of “idiots” who decide to go over rails and fall 13 stories.
For those who worry that some addicts will, as a result of having no insurance, die—they already do die with and without insurance. Truly free markets would reduce the number of addicts dying of their disease by reducing the number of un-sober addicts. And by the way, the backstop for insurance are charitable organizations such as the Salvation Army, which are more capable of reminding addicts of the rules (and much more effective in doing so than one-size-fits-all government will ever be). They would get care—even if they have to lose everything to get that care. On the other hand, losing everything helps to deflate their massive egos, a crucial step in bringing about a long-term cure.
(Story and tagline from “This is True,” copyright 2013 by Randy Cassingham, used with permission. If you haven’t already subscribed to his newsletter—the free one at least, or the paid one I get, with more than twice the stories—I highly recommend it: www.ThisIsTrue.com.)