Ron Paul on NPR: Obamacare is a Continuation of Corporatism

Date: 9/20/2009
Station: National Public Radio

Host: Now one of the strongest opponents of government intervention in reforming the healthcare industry is Congressman Ron Paul, Republican of Texas. He’s known to some as “Dr. No” for his opposition to tax hikes and for his refusal to vote for spending bills. He’s a doctor by training and OBGYN and he’s written a new book simply called “End the Fed” as in the Federal Reserve. I spoke with Ron Paul earlier. We started with health care, which he doesn’t believe is a fundamental right.

Ron Paul: I do not believe peoples’ needs or desires or wants or demands are rights. Once you do that you embark on a system of government that is uncontrollable. You have a right to your life, your liberty, and you should have a right to keep what you earn. So I do not believe medical care is a right and that’s one of the problems that we are facing today and why there’s so much confusion about what we ought to do about healthcare.

Host: Congressman Paul, yesterday on this program we spoke with Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, he’s a Democrat. Like you he opposes a government sponsored health insurance plan. Here’s what he’s proposing: he wants a market based solution, an exchange that would have all insurers compete for your business and mine. But unlike the current plans floating around Capitol Hill, Ron Wyden would allow everyone to take part in that. Would you back something like that?

Ron Paul: Well, from what you told me that sounds like I should certainly think about it. But sometimes when there are offered in that frame of mind it means that they force you to participate.

Host: Under the Wyden plan, and to some extent under the Bachus plan currently circulating in the Senate, health insurance would be a mandate. Most people would be required to buy it.

Ron Paul: That wouldn’t be something that I could support because once the government gets in and either mandates something or regulates it or subsidizes it, it’s no longer insurance. If they want to call that a social welfare program they would be more honest, but they should never use the word “insurance.”

Insurance is a market phenomenon when you buy something and somebody is paid to measure risk, like life insurance. People understand that. This whole idea that anybody that already has a condition can demand insurance is sort of like saying, well, your house is burning down, and you go to the insurance company and say, “Hey my house is on fire, can I buy insurance?” Everybody knows it doesn’t work that way. We here on the coast in Texas, if there’s a hurricane in the Gulf we can’t go out and buy insurance. Otherwise, the insurance companies would all go broke and the government would have to bail them out. If you want better care and cheaper care and more care for more people you have to look to the market for the distribution.

Host: If it was left to market devices, how do envision that working to help insure all Americans?

Ron Paul: About opposite of what we should expect when we go to total government. We have a pretty good record of showing what we did in this country up until the 1960s. I recall working in a church hospital for $3/hour and nobody was ever turned away. Nobody was left out in the streets. Just think of all the church hospitals that have been closed down because of the invasion of government into the healthcare industry.

Host: But who would pay for them?

Ron Paul: Well, who pays for the Shriner hospitals? Charities take care of it, churches take care of it. When government takes care of it the bureaucrats get paid. Insurance companies become the lobbyists, the drug companies become the lobbyists, the management companies become the lobbyists. Doctors get squeezed. The patients get squeezed. You can’t put all these corporations in between the doctors and the patients, you have a form of corporatism which motivates the type of system we have now and it’s not any better. Some worry that Obama would give us socialized medicine but he isn’t. He’s giving us a continuation of corporatism. He’s forcing people to buy insurance. The insurance companies love it. They love to see twenty or thirty million more people being forced into the system and they will have more customers.

Host: Ron Paul, let’s move on to your book now, End the Fed. You want to replace the Federal Reserve with a money system that would be backed by gold or other commodities. Is that right?

Ron Paul: Basically I want to follow the Constitution and that’s what the Constitution says.

Host: Many economists disagree on how the government should have dealt with the financial crisis last year but most of them now concur that the Federal Reserve’s intervention worked to some extent. How would it have worked if there was no Federal Reserve?

Ron Paul: The people who are saying “it worked fine” and Bernanke who says the recession is over are the same people who never say it coming and never predicted it.

Host: We talked to Nouriel Roubini, one of the economists who did, and he agrees with most of the other economists on this.

Ron Paul: What, that everything is okay? (chuckles)

Host: Not that everything is okay, but that the government intervention essentially stabilized the markets.

Ron Paul: To some degree that has happened and you could argue that case and make the point that 1971 we’ve had some dips but the government always came in and bailed them out, printed more money and spent more money and the recessions were held to one year or two years. But what that does, it sort of patches over the leak in the bubble that makes a bigger bubble.

Host: If there was no Federal Reserve, and we had the economic crisis that we had last fall, what would have happened? Where would we be now?

Ron Paul: Most of it would be behind us in a real sense. The best way to understand this would be to understand the depression of 1921. The Federal Reserve came in in 1913 and quickly they became great inflators to pay for World War I that was absolutely unnecessary for us to be involved in. But that inflation had to correct, they still believed that you should have hands-off and not continue to print a lot of money. The boom was there from the wartime boom, they took hands-off and in one year it was over. It was a big, serious crash but nobody remembers about it because it was over in a year.

So, the answer to your question is, if we had done more like 1921, allowed not only Lehmans to go broke, but how about AIG, how about Goldman Sachs? All the correction that is necessary has been delayed. So many bad debts have been passed off to the taxpayers because the Federal Reserve has bought these. And this is why they don’t want us to know, they will not permit an audit, ibecause we’re going to find out too much of the shenanigans that are going on behind the scenes.

Host: Ron Paul, you have tapped into a deep well of anger that is out there in this country. But I am wondering whether you are at all uncomfortable with some of the more extreme statements, posters, and signs that we’ve seen from some of the anti-government protesters in recent weeks. For example, some posters that read, “Bury Obamacare with Kennedy.” We saw them here in Washington, D.C. last weekend. Are you uncomfortable with –

Ron Paul: Yeah, I am uncomfortable but I don’t have control over people. I have control over what I think and do and say and vote. That’s the best I can do and I can make suggestions. I know people are thinking in along those lines and accuse people of things. And then the people on the other side will use the same type of language condemning them. So, I don’t like that. I like to stick with the issues of the marketplace and sound money and limited government and what rights actually mean. That’s the only way we can get to the bottom of these problems.

Host: Congressman Ron Paul represents the 14th District of Texas. His new book is called End the Fed. He joined us from his hometown in Clute, Texas. Congressman, thank you for your time.

Ron Paul: Thank you very much.

1. Ron Paul discusses Obamacare with David Scheiner and Dean Ornish on CNN Show: Larry King Live Host: Wolf Blitzer Date: August 11, 2009 Wolf Blitzer: Joining...
2. Ron Paul Responds to Michael Moore: It’s Corporatism, Not Capitalism Ron Paul: “I probably dislike [the current system] as much as Michael Moore does. But...
3. Ron Paul Talks Healthcare With Michael Berry Show: Michael Berry Show Host: Michael Berry Date: 10/15/2009 Transcript: Michael Berry: We’re talking...