Socialized health care, here we come!
After all, if the left wins in November 08, we’ll all become wards of the state in terms of health care. Fueling this, in addition to the desire of the left and some on the right to grow government, is the international community talking about how great it is to have government healthcare. Now, if you talk to the citizenry of Canada, European nations, etc., you can hear about how bad it is. Gerald at the Cafeteria once mentioned how he was kept in hospital for several days for a simple injury, over a holiday no less, because the hospital needed to fill that bed. It seems in most places, people who don’t live under government health care talk about how great it is, while people who actually have to live with it talk about how terrible it is.
On top of this, fat load Michael Moore’s released a movie called Sicko. In it, he talks about how great Cuba is, and spends time on their medical care system, and how much better it is that the USA’s. John Stossel takes this on in a new editorial:
First let’s acknowledge that the U.S. medical system has serious problems. But the problems stem from departures from free-market principles. The system is riddled with tax manipulation, costly insurance mandates and bureaucratic interference. Most important, six out of seven health-care dollars are spent by third parties, which means that most consumers exercise no cost-consciousness. As Milton Friedman always pointed out, no one spends other people’s money as carefully as he spends his own.
That’s just a taste. Read the whole thing.
Posted in In the news... | 
4 Comments »
August 23rd, 2007 at 1:52 pm
Don’t really understand american politics..heck i don’t understand english…but like your blog nonetheless…
August 29th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
Two significant errors in your arguement.
1. Its easy to claim that the people of Canada and Western Europe don’t like universal health care and that might be the majority viewpoint heard by American conservatives speaking with jet setting European conservatives at international con-fabs. But these nations are all democracies and finding a elected leader calling for privitizing health care is as rare as hens teeth. The real evidence is that while the citizenry might want reforms or improvements to the system, no serious element is calling for its abolishment.
2. The neo-liberal mantra that consumers would spend more wisley if it was their own money is weak. Very little of the expense, particular the rising expenses, of health care is the scraped knee type. Most of it is “end of life” care. Putting off cancer surgery until off-season clearance sales is not a recommendation I would make.
August 29th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
Two significant errors in your talking points:
1. What leads you to believe I am a jet-setter? Also, what leads you to believe these nations are democracies? I am not sure any democracies exist. Instead we have several nations that started out as representative republics that have been leaning more and more toward socialism or at least huge government-imposed regulation in a number of areas, not just health care.
2. It’s economically and practically true that people spend more wisely if it actually “hurts” to spend money…that’s why people who live without credit card debt typically live on less that people with huge credit card debt. And the simple fact is that there are documented cases of the government health systems cutting people off because they’re too expensive to treat – one such story came out in the last couple of weeks.
August 29th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
[...] Sample 1 Sample 2 Sample 3 [...]