Apart from philosophical concerns regarding freedom from government control over our lives and the benefits of individual responsibility and a free market, I would be far less concerned about government participation in the country’s health care if I thought it would remain stagnant and not grow to eventually take over everyone’s health care. Look at what has happened over the last century to the deductions we taken from our paychecks. A hundred years ago we didn’t even have an income tax and now even middle to low income people pay roughly 50% of their income in fed, state, Medicare/Medicaid, and sales taxes.
Social Security, as it was originally sold to the public, has grown to the point that it requires roughly 16% of every person’s salary (half paid by employers unless self-employed, but money still that it costs to employ someone and which could otherwise go to the employee him or herself). For that matter, look at how virtually every government agency and program since the 1930s has grown from what was originally proposed.
Government, above all, seeks to grow. Politicians these days get elected by promising to take money from one group of people and giving it to those whose votes they wish to gain. I find it exceedingly hard to believe that a Democratic president, less than just fifty years ago, was heartily applauded for stating in his inaugural address: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” That certainly isn’t the Democratic philosophy of today, is it?
So what it boils down to for me is that every likelihood is that it would only be a matter of time until the U.S. government took over virtually all of its citizens’ health care. And given its history of inefficiency, bureaucracy, and underfunded social programs providing scant benefit to its intended recipients, I do not want the U.S. government in charge of peoples’ health care. This is not Germany or the U.K. or Canada. Plus, those governments are not stagnant either. Who knows the extent of government control or how much it will be costing them 50 years from now?
There is no limit to the human capacity for want, and there is no limit to politicians’ desire to pander to these wants in order to gain votes. Thus democratic government social programs tend to grow and grow until they collapse under their own weight, some of which is already happening in Canada and the U.K., and most likely to one degree or another in the majority of the other countries that provide government health care.
Ridiculously long waits and lack of sufficient funding has become the hallmark of UHC virtually everyplace it’s been tried, and my opinion is that many more deaths and much more needless suffering will be the order of the day once the government gets its hands on our health care.
Yes, we have a system now in which a minority of the population gets inferior to no care. But the majority are happy with their coverage and the speed with which they get treatment. There are solutions other than government take-over that are not even being looked at because so many people on the left simply want the government to be in charge things, period. “Companies bad; government good” seems to be the prevailing sentiment of the left. Why not pass legislation and regulate the way insurance companies operate if they are cheating people out of coverage they should rightly have? Why not have a program similar to food stamps for people who are truly needy and temporarily require health care without trying to bring everyone else under the government umbrella? Etc., etc., etc.
There is not a single government funded social program that provides more than scant benefit to its recipients, and that can only get worse if the government tries to take on the huge burden of paying for everyones’ health care, and as I said just above, IMO it will be only a matter of time until that become the case, and I don’t want no steenkin’ government bureaucrat deciding what care I’m entitled to or what it will or won’t pay for. With the current system people at least have options. They can go to work elsewhere to get better coverage, they can purchase coverage independently on their own, and/or they can pay for the care they need out of pocket. Once the government takes over – and once again, in my mind that will be only a matter of time – there will be no such options. You get what the government says you get, and you have no recourse otherwise.
That’s funny. I don’t anyone who’s on Medicare that even likes it. I do know some who are glad they have it, but that’s only because they’d have nothing otherwise and to me “It’s better than nothing” is hardly a ringing endorsement. And absolutely everyone I know who is on it and who had health insurance through their employer prior to retirement hates it.