These are just some of my random thoughts about the current healthcare stink. I make no guarantees of accuracy or even sound judgment.
Is healthcare a right?
The rights in the constitution are things that do not impose on another person’s rights, and these are rights to action, not property or some sort of service. The right to free speech, to bear arms, to assemble… to do things. Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness. These are not rights to have things that must be provided but the right to do things.
Government provided healthcare, by definition, has to be provided at someone else’s cost and with someone else’s expertise and equipment. The fact that these services are provided by someone else makes them a privilege, not a right.
OK… not a right. But as a nation can we decide to provide this as a public service? A benefit of paying taxes?
Sure. We, as citizens, can decide to offer these services.
But, isn’t that socialism?
Yes.
OK… but is socialism so bad? We offer other public services too. Are all public services, like Police, Fire, Libraries, Streets, Water/Sewer socialism?
Not really. True… these are programs agreed upon by the population as services to be provided at taxpayer cost, but they are civic services put in place at a local level. Socialism is a system of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy. These civic services work best at a local level. They are limited in size, and this keeps waste and bureaucracy limited in scope.
So, if nationalized healthcare is not a right, but a social program, the question becomes… is it a good idea?
We can only look at examples from other countries that are already offering nationalized healthcare.
These programs are going bankrupt or in serious financial trouble everywhere they have been established, and the tax rates in some of those countries are topping out at around 60% if you add the upper income tax rate and other taxes, like property taxes and the VAT tax, which so popular in Europe. Depending on how much money you make, that’s OVER HALF of your paycheck to the government. Wow.
The law that was passed last week will drive our national debt to over 90% of our governmental budget by 2020. Ninety percent of government spending will go to debt. Let me say that again… NINETY PERCENT.
The long and short is that, while this may be a compassionate and nice thing, our country simply cannot afford it. These programs actually cost money. This is not “free healthcare” by any stretch.
Also, by most accounts the actual medical service suffers from the same waste and inefficiencies as other public services. Long wait times to see a doctor or to have a medical procedure performed (years in some cases). The quality of the care starts to suffer from the bloated system. Case in point… the Prime Minister of Canada recently had heart surgery in Miami, Florida because he could not get the procedure under the nationalized Canadian system… The Prime Minister! There are countless stories of Canadians heading south of the border and paying for treatment that they cannot get in Canada.
My conclusion
I’d rather reform a free market system to provide safeguards for people who need help than begin down a road to public system. The devil in the current system is the mega insurance company. The devil in the other scenario is the government. You can’t find another provider if the government doesn’t do its job. You just live with it… or die with it.