With national elections coming late next year, it is inevitable that the topic of socialized medicine will again rear its ugly head. Much ado is made about the 40,000,000 Americans who do not have health insurance, which makes the fact that there are 260,000,000 Americans that do seem insignificant. Of course the 40,000,000 figure likely includes many young and healthy individuals with low risk of serious illness who don’t believe that health insurance would be cost-effective. But good news doesn’t make for a good emotional talking point.
If one wants to know how a national health care system would operate, one needs to merely look at the systems our government has in place. The most prominent form of socialized medicine in our country is the Department of Veterans Affairs. With 235,000 employees and a budget of more than $60 billion, the VA is the federal government’s second largest department, second only to the Department of Defense. It’s purpose it to provide benefits, disability payments, and health care to military members once they’ve left the service. The medical care provided at most VA facilities is generally considered to be fairly adequate. That is, if you can even get to see a doctor at all.
For those of us who have private health insurance, we can typically see a doctor for any reason within a week or two, depending how busy that doctor’s office is. Not so with VA health care, or any other socialized health system for that matter. Private insurance yields considerable flexibility and a range of choices. If health care is handed to the state, you do it the state’s way on the state’s terms and that’s it. If its one-size-fits-all plan doesn’t suit you, that’s too bad.
The reason for the failure of socialized medicine (aside from the fact that it is run by the government) is the notion that the laws of supply and demand can be ignored. Proponents of socialized medicine desire to create a system that offers unlimited health care to all Americans. Unfortunately, unlimited health care incurs unlimited costs. Since a system that incurs unlimited costs is obviously impossible to operate, rationing of supply is inevitable. Now we have scenarios in which priorities are assigned, and people who have brain tumors that will kill them in a year won’t be treated until the people with brain tumors that will kill them in eleven months are cured.
We can see evidence of this today in the Veterans Affairs health care system. Patients sometimes have to wait months just to see a physician for a non life-threatening condition. In one recent case, a man had to wait four months to get the result of an important medical test. A backlog exists of 400,000 applications and appeals for benefits, most of which are for veterans of previous wars. This problem isn’t limited to the VA. In Canada, wait times to get into hospitals can span weeks or months, including for simple procedures (Compared with the US where wait times are generally dependent on fulfilling medical requirements–such as no eating for a day or two). The average wait time for treatment after seeing a general practitioner is a little over 17 weeks.
Inevitably, you will have people who simply support socialized medicine in general, despite all its failing. They assert that everyone has a right to cheap or free health care no matter how crappy it is. The problem is that health care is not a right in the traditional sense of what a right is. True rights relate to the individual, such as free speech or freedom of religion. To exercise these rights, one does not have to coerce someone else to do something against his or her will. With a socialized medical system, one must coerce complete strangers into funding your actions. You are forcing others to be your slave.
Nationalizing health care, especially in the United States, would be a disaster. The US government has shown an extraordinary propensity for screwing up pretty much ANYTHING it gets involved in. Imagine yourself dealing with the type of people at the IRS or DMV the next time you need stitches.
