Health Care

   "Read my lips. No new taxes." -- George H.W. Bush

     What's said during a political campaign often is abandoned when a candidate encounters governmental reality.

   Candidate Mitt Romney wants to control health care costs.
   Incumbent Barack Obama wants universal health care coverage.
   Insurance only works if everyone participates. That was the lesson Romney learned as governor of Massachusetts.

   The concept of insurance against loss began in London, as merchants considered the risk of losing a cargo if a ship was loss to storms or piracy.
   Consider: There are ten ship owners, each with a cargo valued at $1,000. The odds of a ship being lost are ten to one. If a ship is lost, the owner loses the entire $1,000 value of the cargo.
   But if each owner contributes $100 to a pool, considering the ten to one odds of a total loss, then that owner would be out only $100 if the ship returns safely. And if the ship is lost, that owner is compensated the full $1,000 loss.
   Good number-crunchers that they were, the ship owners got together at a coffee shop in London owned by a man named Lloyd, and organized a plan based on the risk of losing a ship's cargo. Thus was the insurance industry born.

   Conclusion: The way to control costs is through universal coverage. In Massachusetts, expert number-crunchers advised Gov. Romney that the existing system was going bankrupt because the cost of health care for the uninsured was being paid through higher fees at hospitals and higher premiums for those who did have insurance. There was a choice of having X number of people insured at X amount of policy premiums, or having everyone insured at a lower rate per person. And the only way to achieve that was through a mandate that everyone join the plan. Therefore, universal insurance is more cost effective, a concept that would appeal to any Harvard Business School graduate.
   Insurance only works if everyone participates. That is the basic premise of the insurance industry, as learned at Lloyd's coffee house in London more than 200 years ago, and as learned in Massachusetts less than ten years ago.

    Other major Western nations, including Canada and the UK, have universal health care. The view from here is that no matter who wins the election next month, universal health care in America, with a mandate that everyone participate, will remain.