Let’s watch the expensive failure of socialized health care
… somewhere else. Like Wisconsin.
The land of cheese is on the precipice of passing a socialized health care plan for all residents under the age of 65. I guess the older folks are covered by Mother Washington. Their plan will initially result in a tax increase of $510 per month for every worker and could eat up about 20% of family incomes. But they will have a 16 person panel charged with lording over the health of an entire state.
Since Wisconsin is lucky enough to be run by progressives socialists they will impose a hefty portion of the new taxes on businesses. How nice of them! Good thing they aren’t taxing regular people. Those businesses will respond in a number of predictable ways: passing costs on to consumers (real people), depressing profits of owners (real people), or maybe simply relocating out of state (leaving real people unemployed). Those newly employed people will continue to get their free health care – which will be provided by the shrinking number of actual workers who will begin to carry an even larger tax burden. Think of it this way, the state of Wisconsin is putting every business within its borders at a nearly 15% cost disadvantage compared to businesses in other states. And you thought NAFTA was going to make a big sucking sound.
John Stossel pretty much sums up my feelings on the matter:
America needs “Healthy Wisconsin.” The fall of the Soviet Union deprived us of the biggest example of how socialism works. We need laboratories of failure to demonstrate what socialism is like. All we have now is Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, the U.S. Post Office, and state motor-vehicle departments.
It’s not enough. Wisconsin can show the other 49 states what “universal” coverage is like.
Let’s just hop they can crash and burn before such onerous mandates get imposed on the country at large. Maybe when they encounter a financial crisis as they become a mecca for the infirmed and unemployable, lose businesses, and tax their residents to death Americans will see the folly of socialism.
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You don’t need to look any farther than Walter Reed and Tri-Care to see shining examples of how Socialized medicine doesn’t work.
It should be noted that a lot of liberals question whether state’s should try to undertake this effort themselves for a variety of reasons.
My favorite quote:
You could replace state with national and the sentence would read the same. All of the state plans seemed to have suffered the same fate: they were too expensive to be sustainable through economic cycles. Why would we think that it would be any different at the national level where we have suffered significant ups and downs.
The root problem is reality. Even the article mentioned that one of the country’s most wealthy states, Massachusetts, is barely able to afford their latest and greatest plan. The national government can’t even broaden that same plan without taxing MA and other rich states even more to provide it to the poor states. It is expensive enough to divvy up our finite health care among those who earn it through their productivity – we can’t afford to just give it to everyone.
Oh, and kiss all those great medical advances goodbye when the government effectively implements price controls in the health sector. All those “greedy” companies out there toiling away to generate innovative products so that they can make money in a pseudo-free market will significantly curtail their research spending because the potential for return will be diminished.
Only three developed countries do not have universal healthcare: The USA, Mexico and Turkey. Not particularly good company.
Moreover, the US has the distinction of having the world’s most expensive healthcare system which covers the least of it’s population and has some of the worst life expectancy – clearly an enormous waste of individual’s money and a great loss of competitiveness for US industry.
There are few objective reasons to be fearful of improvement when you are at the bottom of the pile – any way is up. For what it’s worth, the rest of the world is bemused and is trying to tell the USA that there is less to fear than you might feel.
If all the other countries jumped off a bridge would you too?
Here’s an article for you to read.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7529454/Hospital-wards-to-shut-in-secret-NHS-cuts.html
As far as life expectancy is concerned, the USA beats the UK once you reach 60 years of age (http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2009/08/life-expectancy-higher-in-us-than-uk-at.html)
This is why our cost is high. We keep old people alive longer. This leads me to believe it is not a health care system problem as much as other problems. We have a murder rate two to three times higher than most of Europe. We also drive more than most other developed nations since we have more space. This means less exercise and more traffic-related deaths which also affects life expectancy. We also calculate infant mortality more stringently than some other countries. I could continue with other factors that are not health care related but affect life expectancy from birth.
Now, one thing to remember is that health insurance is not health care. Most everyone without health insurance still gets health care in this country, just not all the latest and greatest. Seeing as people from other countries come here for the latest and greatest, I’m assuming their universal health care doesn’t provide that either. In America, just walk into an ER and you get seen. One also has other options as well if you are poor and without insurance. For every anecdotal story about someone not getting basic health care, there is one about someone getting it without paying.
“There are few objective reasons to be fearful of improvement when you are at the bottom of the pile – any way is up.” Statements like these are silly and meaningless. Clearly we could move in the wrong direction and make things worse. Change for the sake of change without researching the matter and honestly projecting the impact is reckless. I think this is what this new health care bill is.