Socialized Healthcare!

The President has, yet again, like virtually all of his predecessors, pushed forward with a social agenda that has no regard for the limited powers granted by the Constitution to the federal government. The whole concept of federal management of any aspect of our commercial enterprises, whether it is banking, automobile manufacturing, insurance, or health care is utterly alien to clauses in the Constitution that were written to prevent this very type of government behavior.

Whenever the government regulates anything, there is less of it. Rent control produces fewer apartments. Medicare produces fewer physicians willing to work at government wages. Government negates freedom. Here, the freedom to practice medicine, to choose your physician, to have your medical records not digitized and available to every creep who can get access to them, and the freedom to keep more of your hard-earned money will be interfered with. Whenever the government tells you with whom to deal in the purchase of a service, or induces you, via tax credits or the under-market delivery of a service (like Medicare), to deal with its patrons, it is interfering with your right to contract with whom you wish and in the manner and amount that you wish. The Constitution expressly prohibits taking liberty or rights without a trial, it prohibits taking property without paying for it, and it prohibits the government from interfering with any contract, that is not otherwise illegal, that you care to make.

If the government delivers under-market health care services (health care at a cost less than its true value) via the profligate use of tax dollars, it will actually be setting up yet another grand Medicare-like wealth transfer scheme. Its present welfare transfer schemes loose over 29 cents on the dollar, between the tax payer and the recipient of what remains of the dollar. A good private sector insurance company, one that can freely bargain for customers and medical services, can add 10 cents to the value of each dollar. But the feds have a bottomless pit: It is the misguided, gullible reliance of the public on the government and it is the public’s willingness to pay whatever taxes are imposed upon it. Thus, by making an inferior product so cheap (by subsidizing it with tax dollars), it will drive those who produce better products out of business. That will mean, a single payer (the feds), long lines at ERs and doctors’ offices like at the post office, and inferior quality like virtually everything the government produces. It will also mean bad teeth (like the Brits) unnecessary pain, suffering, humiliation, and premature death; except for those who can pay cash (if cash remains lawful).