Government and Health Care
Most of us know, instinctively, based on our experience with government, that government involvement in health care tends to make it worse, not better. Leftists, however, are telling us that health care is a right, not a privilege.
The problem I have with the concept of health care as a "right," is that to believe that, you have to believe in slavery. In other words, if Joe Schmoe wants health care and can't or doesn't want to pay for it, then, if this is Joe Schmoe's right, you have to compel someone else to provide it.
This is not among the founding principles of the United States. And if this concept gains widespread acceptance, I believe it will be the end of the greatness of this country.
See my blog posting with a link to a video of a town hall meeting with Congressman Pete Starks from California, where one of his constituents makes this point.
A further point is that there are several inherent characteristics of government that make it a poor provider of health care. Government is notoriously inefficient and wasteful, because it lacks the incentives of the profit motive.
And a final point is that it is financially impossible to provide complete and first-class health care to everyone who wants it. Therefore, if the government attempts to promise this, it will have to institute some mechanism of rationing care. This has happened everywhere government-funded health care has been insituted. I have a blog posting where I tell of a person from Scotland whose father was told his life failed to meet the cost-benefit requirements of the state, and thus he was allowed to die. We all know, if we are honest with ourselves and have eyes wide open about the realities of "free" anything, that this is what will have to be done to contain the costs of a fully-funded government healthcare system.