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Socialized Medicine, It doesn’t work.
3 March 2007It just blows me away, with all the fiscal problems we have in this state that we are even talking about socialized medicine. Given our already built in spending, the unfunded liabilities our taxes will have to go up in 2009, 2010 and beyond. The State’s Office of Policy and Management says so. Only deep spending cuts in social programs (because that is where the money is) can avoid further taxes increases. Yet our Governor is talking new educational programs (in a state with the #3 educational spending in the country) and the houses are talking Socialized Medicine. Huh? What am I missing?
But we are not talking about tax cuts at the state capital we are talking massive new programs, like socialized medicine.
Just what example / model of an exisiting socialized medical program are these guys looking at that would give them a inkling of a hint that they could make it work where all others have failed?? I don’t know. We have two great examples of socialized medicine, Great Britain and Canada. A recent article by the economist Walther Williams detailed the failures of socialized medicine.
Problems with our health care system are leading some to fall prey to proposals calling for a nationalized single-payer health care system like Canada’s or Britain’s. There are a few things that we might take into consideration before falling for these proposals.
London’s Observer (3/3/02) carried a story saying that an “unpublished report shows some patients are now having to wait more than eight months for treatment, during which time many of their cancers become incurable.” Another story said, “According to a World Health Organisation report to be published later this year, around 10,000 British people die unnecessarily from cancer each year — three times as many as are killed on our roads.”
The Observer (12/16/01) also reported, “A recent academic study showed National Health Service delays in bowel cancer treatment were so great that, in one in five cases, cancer which was curable at the time of diagnosis had become incurable by the time of treatment.”
The story is no better in Canada’s national health care system. The Vancouver, British Columbia-based Fraser Institute has a yearly publication titled, “Waiting Your Turn.” Its 2006 edition gives waiting times, by treatments, from a person’s referral by a general practitioner to treatment by a specialist. The shortest waiting time was for oncology (4.9 weeks). The longest waiting time was for orthopedic surgery (40.3 weeks), followed by plastic surgery (35.4 weeks) and neurosurgery (31.7 weeks).
Canadians face significant waiting times for various diagnostics such as computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and ultrasound scans. The median wait for a CT scan across Canada was 4.3 weeks, but in Prince Edward Island, it’s 9 weeks. A Canadian’s median wait for an MRI was 10.3 weeks, but in Newfoundland, patients waited 28 weeks. Finally, the median wait for an ultrasound was 3.8 weeks across Canada, but in Manitoba and Prince Edward Island it was 8 weeks.
Despite the long waiting times Canadians suffer, sometimes resulting in death, under federal law, private clinics are not legally allowed to provide services covered by the Canada Health Act.
I have relatives in Great Britain, they can not understand why we would want such a system, it is a topic of discussion over there, our fascination with a failed model of health care delivery. We have the finest health care system in the world, why would want to go backwards?
Why is doomed to failure? It is simple, Government involvement raises the cost. That is it. When the Government gets in to the marketplace it raises the costs of goods and services. Case in point, does any seriously believe the DMV is run efficiently? What privately run service demands your physical presence to conduct business? Only Government does. There is no incentive in this land of high taxes for the Government to be run efficiently, and I’m sure they have hundreds of reasons why I must physically be there to pay, all valid I’m sure.
Government raises prices for two reasons, they have the authority of law so there is NO pressure for them to be efficient, second they have access to unlimited funds, OUR MONEY. There is no reason for them to be the most efficient they possibly could.
Once the Government passes a law giving them the sole and legal authority to provide a service, the planners are hired and they decide what town gets a clinic and what town does not. Of course since our servants are overworked, and un-fireable it will take months to decide if a town needs an expanded clinic.
In my town a new clinic was announced and up in running in a year, whereas we have been arguing about the new sewer systems for years. And if the clinic fails, so be it. The marketplace was the planner and it is a more efficient planner than the Government could ever hope to be.
Once the Goverment has control and prices rise as they must, costs of the program will rise and the citizens will become alarmed and since there is really in the long run only a finite amount of money in the state (an economic reality our servants can not possibly learn) and since programs are never cut back. Services will have to be rationed. Just like in the Soviet Union and Canada and Great Britian.
There is no working example of this model working that we would find appealing.
We need to rein in our servants they are bankrupting us and they are going to deliver sub-standard services.
I am sure the response to this will be, we are just talking about a single payer not complete a takeover of the system. As the largest payer in the system with rule of law and law making behind them, they will demand rights the private sector could not hope to get, they can’t help being the 800 pound gorilla in the room.
This model of Government in-ability to manage efficently does exist and is all around us. Why does our Government continually ignore the lessons of history? It is all about power, we need to take it back by changing our servants in the next election.
They last thing we want is centalized planning, it is The Road to Serfdom. Under the promise of providing comfort for all they will enslave us all.
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