The Rod Clarke Voluntary Enrollment Health Insurance Plan 
By Martin Harris 

Several decades ago, I visited the governmental operation in Montpelier to watch a small part of the statutory-sausage-manufacture process in action. As it turned out, the street theatre out front that day was far more enlightening and entertaining than the under-the-Golden-Dome committee room proceedings. Perhaps some of the following details of my time-fuzzed recollection are not historically precise, but I present them only to provide background for, and support of, what I learned there, which seems increasingly to have a lot of relevance (albeit zero recognition by The Very Important People) in the contemporary furor over whether and how we should pay for each others’ health care, in accordance with the fourth inalienable-right principle set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the mandatory prescription (medical pun intended) for governmental-action obligation set forth in Article VIII of the US Constitution.

On State Street –more precisely, on the sidewalk fronting on the Ag building-- was a mini-convention of motorcycle aficionados, mightily upset over a recently-proposed helmet requirement. There were speakers declaiming on such subjects as the erosion of personal freedom and the virtues of "choice" (just as that noun was beginning to take on a whole ‘nother political meaning) and a few random comments on mandatory seat-belts, child-safety-seats, and the leave-us-alone option more politically popular in a more politically conservative New Hampshire.

One of that group was the erstwhile Montpelier Bureau Chief for news-wire-service UPI Rod Clarke, who, I speculated, was finding in mid-life that outdoor biking is more fun, if less financially rewarding, than indoor reporting, and it was he, if memory serves, who made the most useful comments of the event. He spoke first to recognize the fact that a helmet-less rider whose skull engages the pavement is likely to require a lot of expensive medical services, which he, personally, most likely won’t pay for, and that it was therefore unreasonable for bikers who wanted to rely on such services, should the unthinkable happen, to ride helmet-less and impose the costs thus created on unwilling others. Then he proposed a constructive contractual alternative: that any biker who values no-helmet riding sign a waiver releasing the taxpaying public from paying for his skull-repair. He would either pay for it himself out of his trust fund, by insurance he has prudently (and voluntarily) bought, or eschewing such expensive measures, would expect only sedatives, a warm bed, and a tight roof  (I won’t subject readers to the then Ag Secretary Earl Butz’s notoriously similar quote here) until he assumes room temperature as a result of his preventable but non-prevented injuries. As I recall, there were bandana-head-geared bikers in the small crowd waving copies of just such a proposed document.

UPI isn’t any more what it once was – a pillar of  American Fourth Estate professionalism—and is now a much diminished wholly-owned subsidiary of a Korean  religious organization, but it at least survives, if barely. The contract proposal hasn’t. It should have.

That’s because it offers a logical solution to the contemporary health insurance debate impasse: critics on one side arguing that Article VIII doesn’t exist, and government has no authority to pretend that it does, and defenders on the other side arguing that we’re all in this together and that, for purposes of actuarially-based financial soundness, everyone must contribute, irrespective of personal health, prospective need, or private wish, in accordance with his financial ability, so that each may be medically serviced, as appropriate for his professionally-determined need (and age, another whole ‘nother subject). No one on the "choice" side of this debate is offering to waive, as the bikers did, a possible future service demand, and no one on the mandatory side is offering to make insurance purchase optional or even risk-based, as it is with, say, cars, boats, and houses (and, I suspect, with motorcycles).

In the early 19th century when fire protection wasn’t a government service but a private contract, insurance buyers displayed the medallion of their chosen emergency-service-contractor at their front door, to prove, when the fire-fighters arrived, that the flaming building had been duly insured. Home-owners were free to self-insure, if they wished (assuming their mortgage-lender was agreeable) and take their chances. Today it’s a government service, even if many of the best in it are volunteers, but it’s fair to wonder whether, like so many other paid-for-by-all government services, it might not be better executed in Rod Clarke fashion, through individual choice and private contract. That would be in sharp contrast with education, for example, where there’s emerging in the similar educational debate the beginnings of the notion that parents who decline the public service shouldn’t be taxed to pay for it (and their chosen voluntary alternative as well) although that argument, so far, has been roundly rejected by the collectivist we-all-benefit-therefore-we-all-pay followers of Horace Mann’s "free education" doctrine.

Just as I dare not recite Secretary Butz’s full quote here, similarly I dare not speculate on the merits of the mandatory-helmets-because-we-all-benefit-when-all-bikers-ride-cerebrally-protected doctrine. Maybe I’ve seen one too many Hell’s Angels movies. 

Martin Harris is a former Chairman of Citizens for Property Rights