Please excuse me from Socialized Medicine

One of the major campaign themes this year, and indeed every year, is health care. Namely, politicians wonder what they can do to screw it up. The all-powerful federal bureaucracy is going to find a way to make health care free! It will be absolutely free! The magic government has found a way, you see, to make the laws of economics, supply and demand as it were, which apply to every single economic endeavor NOT apply to the health care industry. How did they accomplish this wondrous task? Don't ask, or you hate poor people and the elderly.

Let's take a quick poll:
1. How many people enjoy going to the DMV (for those of you in Arizona, the MVD)? Raise your hands, now.
2. How many people find the IRS to be a compassionate and helpful organization? Raise your hands, now.
3. How many people marvel at the efficiency of the post office? Raise your hands, now.

If anyone raised their hand when answering this question, they most likely work for the above organizations. In that case, you don't count and I will summarily disregard your thoughts (much like the IRS does to me).

Nationalized health care will accomplish three things. It will create a giant, and I mean GIANT, unaccountable federal bureaucracy that combines the efficiency of the Post Office with the compassion of the IRS and the service quality of the DMV.

Why is this the case? Because all three organizations are government agencies with no competition. It is a fundamental law (that even neo-libs can't argue against, try as they feebly might) that competition drives prices down when barriers are reduced. You can't get certified to drive by anyone else but the state DMV where you reside. You can't pay your federal taxes to anyone else but the IRS. You can't mail a certified letter through anyone but the US Postal Service. Because of these indisputable facts there is no incentive whatsoever for any of these agencies to increase productivity, lower prices, streamline processes, or improve customer service. Don't want to wait 3 hours in line at the DMV for a new license? Tough, don't get one then. Don't like dealing with a group of thinly disguised misanthropes who covet every last dime you earned? Tough, the IRS is it, pal. There is no incentive to deal with you like a human being because you can't go anywhere else, it becomes a government controlled monopoly.

How does this relate to Hillarycare? Very simple. The Demogogue campaign is heavily centered on forcing you to enroll in a health care plan. From a distance, this looks like it means you have a private plan or two and a government plan to choose from. It looks like, superficially, a choice plan for every American. Hillary even is calling hers "the Health Choices Plan." Unfortunately, voting for her, or Obama, or Kucinich, is where your choice in the matter would end, ultimately.

I will break this down in phases.

Phase 1: Once the government began insuring every citizen who didn't have insurance, or in the case of Hillary's or Edward's plans, forcing Insurance Companies to insure people regardless of their suitability for a particular plan, it would force these companies to begin hemorrhaging money. When faced with the prospect of going out of business entirely or raising prices, most companies will raise their prices. Americans, lured in by the siren song of "free" health care from the government, will be unwilling or unable to pay these premiums and will switch to the government plan. In ten years or less private insurance would cease to exist for 90% of the population.

Phase 2: The remaining 10%? They would eventually be forced into government controlled health care when the radical egalitarian zealots decided, like they did in Canada, the United Kingdom, France, etc, that no one should have private insurance because health care should not be a "business". The very market forces that work to keep business in business would be swallowed by the temporarily (I cannot stress this enough) cheaper and more efficient government-run program.

Phase 3: Once government has acquired the insurance companies that have gone bankrupt because of its own policies and absorbed them into their infrastructure there will be a temporary period of efficiency because the government is realigning the entire process and Americans are still getting used to the whole change. Congress will decide that since private insurance no longer exists in any real sense, it will make health care a "right" and institute "free" health care.

Phase 4: Americans, realizing that they can go to the doctor now without spending a dime, will begin going for even the most basic problems. The government's desire (see all main Democrat talking points on health care) for "preventive care" will send more and more people to the doctor than actually need to go. John Edwards actually says he would force people into the doctor's office for preventive treatment.

Phase 5: At this point the absolute law of supply and demand will be thrown on its ear and the market will shudder, horribly. The originally semi-low sum of $100-500 Billion the government originally allocated towards health care will no longer be enough. There are no longer private firms in the health insurance business to absorb (more efficiently, I might add) the costs of insuring citizens (and in many of the top-tier Demogogue candidates, illegals) the price of health care will skyrocket.
Nationalized health care pretends the laws of supply and demand don't exist, basically. When a service is made "free" demand will skyrocket but supply will remain the same. You cannot increase the amount of availability for health care except by building new hospitals and hiring more doctors or nurses. In order to meet the astronomically high demand for "free" health care the government will begin offering huge grants to lure people into the field attracting, in many cases, people who shouldn't be in the field but are allowed to pursue it because the government needs these people, and fast.

Phase 6: The prices for nationalized health care have reached such a point that the government begins reneging on the promises it made when it introduced the plan because it simply cannot afford to keep funding at earlier levels. It can raise taxes to 70 and 80% of income (like in Canada) but still be bankrupt by midway through the year. People will begin to notice, and complain, that they are paying exorbitantly high taxes for a service most of them hardly use. Additionally, the high demand but steady supply of health care services will force the government to introduce a rationing system for the care. A giant, unfeeling, number-crunching bureaucracy will begin deciding how doctors can treat, whom they can treat, how long they can treat, and when they must let a patient go. If a doctor in the service of the state decides that you are a goner, you can't go seek a second opinion because the doctor works for the only employer of his services in the country. His note will be your patient's death certificate. You have simply become too expensive to keep alive. (Don't believe me? Look here). When the government controls your life, and is directly bearing the burden for the costs of your life, it decides when that cost becomes too high for it to bear.

Phase 7: In an effort to control costs further, the government will introduce mandatory lifestyle orders on everyone. Failing to abide by these laws will mean termination of your enrollment in the socialized system. Laws controlling how much you can eat, how often you can drive, whom you can marry, how many children you can have, which "non-essential" treatments (like glasses) are allowed per life, etc. Since everything is conceivably related to your health and welfare, the government therefore has the authority to mandate how you live.

Phase 8: Sort of as a side note, phase 8 is the silent but most unfortunate aspect of the whole scheme. As the government consolidates all health care related matters into itself to control costs it naturally absorbs the pharmaceutical industry. Those drug companies that do not allow themselves to be annexed will find themselves unable to sell their products because the government, as the sole provider of medical care, refuses to pay the price they will accept. (I don't have time to go into this one again, see my earlier posts). Basically, if you believe that drug companies charge high prices to kill old people you are too stupid to be reading this and I would rather you go somewhere else, like MoveOn.org. The pharmaceutical industry charges the prices it does because it needs to recoup the costs of medical trials lasting ten years or more, research and development, grants to universities for their medical trials, etc. When the drug companies can no longer make enough money to stay afloat they will follow the same descent as the hospitals themselves. To make a long story short, say goodbye to medical innovation.

Phase 9: We have now reached the point where the government controls what you eat and where you go, has you on a waiting list a mile long for a basic procedure, can decide to euthanize you if it deems it cost effective, taxes you into submission, mandates what drugs you take and when, and last but not least will force you into these situations for "your own good".
In perhaps my absolute favorite vindication the Supreme Court of Canada, in a 2005 ruling, said that Canada's vaunted system, the one which Americans should try to emulate as we are so often told, was so inefficient, poorly managed, deadly (yes, deadly), and unequal that the government had to either 1) permit the development of a private system (!!!) or 2) rebuild the entire system. It was only one vote short of ruling the whole system so badly organized and operated that it was a violation of human rights! I LOVE this.

Michael Moore can go straight to hell.

Please excuse me from this whole plan. I would rather pay for my own service than subjugate everyone in America to such a draconian, inefficient, death-cult system as has sprung up in the rest of the so-called civilized world.

When did we, as a people, reach the point in our entitlement mindset that we deserve everything handed to us? When did we reach the point where we no longer believed that if we overeat, or smoke our whole lives, or take illegal drugs, we should have the rest of society foot the bill for our medical care? That is not compassion, that is an attempt to normalize bad behavior, and I want no part of it.