Mythbusters: Socialized Medicine is a Good Thing

Cory Truax, Democrats, Health Care

For whatever reason, I recently found my television tuned to CNN one morning. Believe me, though, that is by no means a habit. What I found on the screen, however, was riveting. You may not find it so, but I was enthralled by CNN’s special on health care. Being a policy nerd, I watched and listened closely to CNN’s classic and expected unbiased analysis.

While I’m sure CNN would purport to have not taken sides, the program almost openly endorsed a health care system akin to those in Western Europe, Canada, and that are supported by the Democrat Party. I believe that the media and liberals at large greatly exaggerate the virtues of this health care system—socialized medicine. What I want to do in the following post is debunk the myth that government-run, tax-funded health care is an efficient, desirable, and superior method to deliver medical services to citizens. In the end, what I want to prove to you is this: Americans are just too good for socialized medicine. We deserve better.

Government health care’s proponents and detractors have different names for it. Some call it a “single-payer system.” Others call it “nationalized,” or “socialized” medicine. But whatever one dubs it, this proposal, supported by figures such as Senator Hillary Clinton, and Representative Jim McDermott, has been installed in all of the principal European countries and Canada; therefore, an evaluation of their systems would be prudent.

All of the Euro-Canadian systems differ in some facet, but the basic framework is consistent. The health care systems are financed primarily—and almost entirely—by tax revenue. The health care industry is heavily regulated, including price controls and wage controls. Its few positive features is that no third parties enter the system and few administrative costs fix into prices because private doctors bill the government, which doles out the fee.

The most attractive attribute of this health care arrangement is that every citizen has coverage. Canadians and Europeans have no upfront costs for general medical care, most drugs and hospital visits. Because coverage is not linked to employment, health care is purely portable.

Now that I have given all the credit I can, and I fulfilled my bipartisan requirements, allow me to share with you why Americans deserve so much better than the failure that is socialized medicine.

The costs of government providing health care are astronomical and prohibitive. First, regulations from federal and local levels hamper the medical industry. The government sets doctors’ fees and punishes any doctor who charges any price but the government-mandated one. This setup has strained the government-doctor relationship in several countries, even causing strikes in Canada. These wage controls have also provided disincentives to students interested in medicine. Indeed, American doctors make as much as one-third more than European and Canadian doctors.

Regulatory problems continue with the fact that allowing health care to have no direct, upfront cost to the consumer has resulted in overuse of medical services. Consequently, governments that have implemented socialized health care have been forced to discourage use of the medical system they provide for citizens. In Canada specifically, different provinces have implemented laws to dissuade overuse of the medical system. The first plan includes capping the income of a doctor, which is linked to how much care the practitioner provides. The effect has been that after doctors reach their income limit for the year, they stop practicing until the next fiscal year. Another plan does not completely cap earnings, but begins paying less after a doctor meets a set amount.

Another strategy national health care systems use to keep usage down is setting hospital’s budgets. The hospitals then allocate how much money it can spend on individual services for the fiscal year. When the hospital reaches its cap for that particular surgery or procedure, waiting lists are compiled. Those waiting lists, moreover, are often lengthy. Furthermore, the budgeting laws require that most advanced medical equipment be in a hospital. This concentration of power and resources results in patients waiting much longer for tests than they would in America. For perspective, one should consider that America has eight times more MRI units per million people than Canada, and almost 13 times as many CT scanners as Canada.

Finally the tax bill for government health care is absolutely atrocious. The term “cost prohibitive” doesn’t begin to describe socialized medicine. to most. Income taxes in Europe and Canada range from being 15 to 20 percent higher than in the United States. Also, sales taxes, and thus products’ prices, are higher.

As a closing argument, I would like to submit a thought to you. Every time we give government something to do, they fail miserably. We gave them education, and they gave us public schools. We gave them transportation, and they gave us shoddy roads and the Department of Motor Vehicles. We gave them the ability to tax income, and they gave us The New Deal, The Great Society, and The War on Poverty. Bottom line: government fails.

America’s health care system, for its flaws, is still the coveted in the world. Without protestation, Americans deserve a better health care system than they have now. But I believe with sincere conviction that we certainly deserve better than the health care the Democrat Party and the liberal wing of the body politic want to perpetrate upon us.

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Cory Truax @ May 14, 2008