If Socialized Medicine Is So Great…
Posted on October 29, 2007
…then why is everyone trying to get away from it in Britain?
Record numbers of Britons are travelling abroad for medical treatment to escape the NHS – with 70,000 patients expected to fly out this year.
And by the end of the decade 200,000 “health tourists” will fly as far as Malaysa and South Africa for major surgery to avoid long waiting lists and the rising threat of superbugs, according to a new report.
The first survey of Britons opting for treatment overseas shows that fears of hospital infections and frustration of often waiting months for operations are fuelling the increasing trend.
Patients needing major heart surgery, hip operations and cataracts are using the internet to book operations to be carried out thousands of miles away.
The left likes to say that these waiting lists, et al, are only in regards to non-emergency issues. Now, I’m no doctor, but it doesn’t get much more serious than heart surgery, does it?
And yet the left wants this kind of system for the United States. No thank you.
Also see: Michelle Malkin
(Cross-posted at Liberty Pundit.)
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12 Responses to “If Socialized Medicine Is So Great…”
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I suspect the progressive response would be that the right people haven’t tried it (socialized medicine) yet.
I was under the impression that this was a sacred cow in
Great Britain. I remember seeing PM John Majors telling
Parliament that the Tories would protect the NHS. I know
that Canadians aren´t happy and that should tell the
liberals something.
Socialized Medicine is not great. It just sounds great in theory. Socialized everything sounds
great in theory especially to the masses who aren’t that sophisticated. If a politician tells
you they can get you everything you didn’t get for yourself, if you aren’t that bright you
probably will believe them. This is the 21st century version of the snake oil salesman, and th
the proper way to deal with it is to do what you are doing, which is point out its flaws not
in theory but in reality. This is the M.O. of Hillary Clinton. She promises everything to
everyone and she does it because it works. Here is how I see her packaged socialism…
http://www.proprietornation.blogspot.com/2007/10/socialist-or-vote-buyer-does-it-really.html
If you believe that socialized, or nationalized health has anything to do with “Health Care”, you are sorely mistaken. The real agenda is control of the electorate. If government beaurocrats are in charge of giving or denying your health care, you WILL do what they say or they will allow you or your family to go untreated. Britain has already begun using the withholding of health care to punish those who hold anti-abortion views, smokers, and anti-immigration activists.
Try to imagine a world where Hillary controls every citizens access to medicine and health care. I’ve been saying it for 20 years, but no one seems to listen. Once the government controls your health care and your energy useage through taxation, regulation, whatever, they control you completely. Let’s see, what is on the Democrat agenda…. Nationalized health care? Check! Global Warming? Energy policy? Check!
Here in America we have socialized schools, police, retirement benefits, even health care for the elderly and poor. Do we complain about these programs at times? Of course. Are they perfect? No. But how many of us are ready to abolish Medicare and let Grandma find her own insurance? How about hiring your own police force? The fact is, people in Britain, Canada, and pretty much everywhere else universal health care exists are healthier than we are by most measures, even though we pay more for the broken system we have than any other country.
We have a rising threat of super bugs in the U.S. also. U.S. residents travel abroad to obtain organs which are harder to obtain in the U.S. due to ethical concerns as well as demand.
Jimmac, besides the police, which of those institutions works well in a socialized way? Are you saying that Social Security is something you want to hold up as a model of socialization?
It is not. Social Security is a prime example of the failures of socializing anything. Are you
saying that Medicare is an example of socialization at work? It isn’t. Medicare is about to go
bankrupt. I don’t know how you figure that Brits are more healthy than Americans, however,
one thing I do know is that Brits, Canadians and most every other country with socialized
medicine do not pro create. If things don’t change there won’t be a Britain in fifty years
because there will be no one left.
Having seen the provider side of Medicare and how awfully it is abused, I would gladly let Grandma find her own health insurance (I think social Security should be abolished too, so people can invest their own money), provided we removed some of the awful restrictions on health insurance. For instance, don’t restrict the states they can provide insurance in, the way the auto insurance industry works, and you’d see prices come down. It’s basic economics called competition, and when allowed to work, it is certainly many times more efficient than government monopoly.
“health tourists†will fly as far as Malaysia….
Malaysia huh? “Both the public and private sectors are important players in Malaysia’s healthcare delivery system. About 80 per cent of healthcare services are provided by the public sector, which is still considered one of the best in the region. The public sector is heavily subsidized and focuses on healthcare promotion as well as rehabilitative and curative care at the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels.”
You right-wingers are a hoot. You’re so dumb it ain’t funny anymore.
“Are you saying that Social Security is something you want to hold up as a model of socialization?”
Uh, yeah, I think most of the seniors who depend on Social Security would consider it somewhat successful. Just how long does a government program have to work before you right wingers figure out that not everything is best left to the private sector, and that government, when not corrupted by greedy corporate interests, and not run by people who don’t believe in it, can actually be quite effective?
“Are you saying that Medicare is an example of socialization at work? It isn’t. Medicare is about to go
bankrupt.”
Helped along, you forgot to mention, by one of the dumbest and most corrupted pieces of legislation to come out of the “conservative” Republican congress a few years back, the prescription drug bill.
“Having seen the provider side of Medicare and how awfully it is abused, I would gladly let Grandma find her own health insurance”
Your Grandma must be richer than mine. My Grnadma might be able to afford insurance from your much adored private sector if she didn’t have to buy groceries too.
ok- let’s not leave Grandma to find her own insurance, but let’s be reasonable here. Socialized medicine sounds great in theory, everyone is happy, everyone has care, let’s all hug each other and smile. In reality, there is no utopia and there will always be people who will take advantage of the system and drive costs up, hence driving the quality of care down for everyone. I recently learned in one of my public health courses that the US spends more on healthcare per capita than any other industrialized nation. I know from working in the field that that money is horribly mismanaged and the people that are under government insurance do not receive high quality medical treatment. Based on my experience, giving the government more money that it can continue to mismanage just doesn’t seem logical and in fact, I would predict that it will cost the little guy (like me) more out of pocket and drive the overall quality of care down even further.
In my opinion, it seems that the litigous nature of our society is partially to blame here. Awarding people astronomical amounts of money for frivolous lawsuits drove up cost of malpractice insurance, and thus drove up the cost of medical care and insurance premiums. And it just keeps cycling. The buck will continue to be passed until it lands on the man trying to support a family of four on a 30K/year income who can’t pass the buck any farther. It’s important to ensure that people have access to high quality health care, but giving the government control over this will not facilitate better care. It needs to be made financially possible for everyone to have access to good quality healthcare, and to do that overall costs need to come down. Limiting awards for frivolous lawsuits is one way to do that.
Whoever becomes the Democratic presidential nominee, one thing is certain. They will advocate a system of socialized medicine much like Canada, Sweden or the UK.
To get citizens to buy into such a huge expansion of government, politicians will cite 45 million uninsured, then seek to blur the distinction between not having medical insurance and not having access to medical care.
Folks might be tempted to nod approvingly when they hear these politicians say that America is a rich and compassionate nation and free health care for all is no-brainer; that if not for heartless Republican-types, the people would already be in health care nirvana.
But no-brainer solutions to complex social problems do not exist. Social policy cannot solve problems; the best it can do is trade one set of problems for another. Society’s challenge is to determine which set of problems is most tolerable, then make the most intelligent tradeoff possible.
Just as falling apples are governed by the law of gravity, market activity is governed by laws of supply and demand. This is the inherent problem of universal health care. Anytime a product or service is offered at no cost, supply cannot keep pace with demand.
While the number of doctors, nurses, hospital beds, operating rooms, MRI machines and so on is limited, demand for service is not. When health care is an entitlement, yet all service-providing resources are already being utilized, the only option is to create waiting lists.
Imagine if government provided free auto insurance. Many folks would call the body shop whenever a shopping cart blemished their paint. Swamped service providers would have no choice but to require everyone wait their turn, even those with inoperable vehicles.
While candidates Clinton, Obama and Edwards seem oblivious to the inevitable downsides of their universal health care plans, leaders of countries with such systems know them well.
Sweden, having had socialized medicine since 1946, is thought to have the most trouble-free system. But, consider the case of Goran Persson.
Persson fractured his hip in 2003, and was required to wait eight months for a hip replacement surgery. As he awaited surgery, he was forced to reduce his workload and take increasingly strong painkillers.
What made Persson’s situation unique was not his wait, but rather the fact that he was Prime Minister of Sweden at the time. Though he could have used his position to jump ahead in line, it was not in his political interest to do so.
Luckily for Persson, he was not Canadian. Then, he would have had to wait another 60 to 90 days (Fraser Institute). And in the UK, he might have had to lose weight before getting on a list at all.
Americans have no waiting lists. Patients get their surgeries within days, not weeks or months. No wonder more Canadians have hip replacements in Cleveland Ohio (at their own expense), than any location in their own country.
To control the huge costs created by unlimited demand, physician choice and treatment options have to be limited. The pay of medical professionals is also constrained, routinely creating market shortages. The UK has had to import tens of thousands of doctors. In Canada, they had to ban private practice altogether to keep their doctors roped into the system.
Then, there is the tradeoff in liberty. Not long ago, many of us applauded as the US government fleeced the evil tobacco industry on the grounds that their contribution to the poor health of Americans impacted government health programs like Medicaid, Medi-Cal and Medicare.
That principle establishes that once you give government responsibility for your medical care, they will take control of your health care. In other words, in return for medical insurance, they insist on dictating your lifestyle.
The London Telegraph tells of John Nuttall, a citizen who was refused ankle surgery from the National Health Service because he could not quit smoking. The hospital required Nuttall, who had purchased National Insurance stamps all of his life, to cease smoking as a condition of surgery, citing a study that found smokers healed slower than average.
Politicians say socialized medicine is the only way to deal with 45 million people in America without health coverage. But, in Uninsured in America (http://www.libertypen.com/science.htm), filmmaker Stuart Browning details who makes up this population. Almost one third of the 45 million are eligible for Medi-Cal or Medicaid but have not applied. Another third are illegal aliens. Among the rest, nine million of them have incomes over $75,000 a year.
Some Americans do lack access to adequate protection from catastrophic medical expense, often due to preexisting medical conditions. A remedy is needed for them alone. The rest of us need to fully recognize that the tradeoffs in both quality and liberty are far too great for a government health system to be considered.