Quote:
Originally Posted by A. Crowley
Wowza.
Can you document any of your claims, ever?
Didn't think so.
Yer the Perfect Republican.
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Nationalized Healthcare: Free Isn't Always Better
“Free” Healthcare:
It is often said that Nationalized Healthcare is “free” healthcare. Of course, this isn’t true. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Like Europe and Canada, American Citizens will pay for this healthcare with much higher taxes. Politicians complain now that our government is short of money. Add billions for “free” healthcare and you can see why the tax rates in Europe and Canada dwarf ours. In fact, taxes in America consume approximately 29% of economic output; while taxes in Europe consume approximately 42% of theirs.
A Monopoly:
Through regulation and legislation, the government creates a healthcare monopoly where industry players are forced to conform. As with all monopolies, competition is eliminated. Without competition, the uniformity and lack of entrepreneurship adds to costs. As with all bureaucracies, change slows to a snail’s pace and an otherwise dynamic industry stagnates. There is no incentive to develop new technologies or adapt to changing demands because there is little opportunity for financial reward.
Supply and Demand:
Because healthcare will seemingly be “free”, we will fast have a supply and demand problem. When there is no cost to a commodity, it is over consumed and a shortage develops. Only this shortage won’t be for Cabbage Patch Kids, it will be for your healthcare. This means long lines at your doctor’s office and hospital emergency rooms. Think about it, if you’re sick and call your doctor and are told that you have to wait 6 months for an appointment, you are going to go to the emergency room. Well, the emergency room is filled with people waiting, sometimes for days. It only gets worse if you need surgery. In Canada, heart surgeons report that their patients are dying on their waiting lists.
Keeping Costs Low:
As Demand rises so do costs. The government then has to raise taxes to pay for rising costs. They can’t do this forever though. The tax burden soon reaches its breaking point, and the government is forced by any means necessary to hold down costs. How do they do this? Well, it starts with the equipment. They stop buying M.R.I. machines, Ultrasound machines, hospital beds and other expensive cutting edge technology that we rely on for our advanced healthcare. With fewer machines, technology and hospital beds comes longer lines and more waiting. But it gets even scarier, the most expensive component of healthcare is labor.
Capping:
Doctors, nurses and other vital healthcare technicians come under tight government controls. Their salaries and fees are negotiated. This leads to frequent work stoppages from nurses, ambulance drivers, doctors, dispatchers and anyone else on the government payroll. Ceilings are placed on doctor’s income. For instance in Quebec, any fees earned by a general practitioner in excess of $164,108 a year are only reimbursed at a rate of 25%. This has had a negative impact on work incentives as doctors choose not to work as much after they have hit $164,108. Once again, less doctors means longer lines. It also affects the quality of the doctor. If the best and brightest can make more money working in another profession and not be subjected to such smothering regulation and limited technology, they’re smart enough to do it. Top doctors and nurses in Canada have come to America so that they can work with cutting edge technology and make as much money as their talent earns them. If we had Nationalized Healthcare here in America, doctors wouldn’t go to another country; they would go into another profession.
The Myth of Equality:
There is a belief that Nationalized Healthcare levels the playing field between the haves and have nots. This is not true. While some groups benefit, others suffer. We’ve established the fact that long waiting lines and lists plague the system. It is the employed that can’t afford to take time out of work to wait for appointments or routine treatments that suffer the most. If they absolutely have to take time out of work, the cost of waiting impacts them much more than the unemployed or wealthy. Another problem is that those connected somehow to a doctor or hospital director or someone who knows them don’t have to have to wait three days in the emergency room before their sick child gets seen. They, pick up the phone, make a call and cheat the system. This pushes everybody in the line back.
The Bureaucracy:
Add to all of this the fact that our government will be managing this monstrosity. This means layers of management, misallocations of resources, slow decision making, unrealistic budgets, overspending, corruption and everything else that we’ve come to expect from big government management.
Conclusion:
The end result is that Nationalized Healthcare provides a poor quality of service. The healthcare providers already have more patients than they can handle and no incentive to provide better care. Nationalized Healthcare is a flawed concept that should not be considered in a successful free market economy. I could spend an entire column explaining the true reasons politicians push for socialized medicine, but I’ll save that for another day. In the meantime, I hope I’ve provided some insight into the problems that other countries are having since they’ve nationalized their healthcare. Remember, “Free” isn’t always better.
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