Why Are We Moving Toward Socialized Medicine?

By Yaron Brook

Government intervention in medicine is wrecking American health care. Nearly half of all spending on health care in America is already government spending. Yet President Obama's "reforms" will only expand that intervention.

Prior to the government's entrance into medicine, health care was regarded as a product to be traded voluntarily on a free market--no different from food, clothing, or any other important good or service. Medical providers competed to provide the best quality services at the lowest possible prices. Virtually all Americans could afford basic health care, while those few who could not were able to rely on abundant private charity.

Had this freedom been allowed to endure, Americans' rising productivity would have afforded them better and better health care, just as, today, we buy better and more varied food and clothing than people did a century ago. There would be no crisis of affordability, as there isn't for food or clothing.

But by the time Medicare and Medicaid were enacted in 1965, this view of health care as an economic product--for which each individual must assume responsibility--had given way to a view of health care as a "right," an unearned "entitlement," to be provided at others' expense.

This entitlement mentality fueled the rise of our current third-party-payer system, a blend of government programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, together with government-controlled employer-based health insurance (itself spawned by perverse tax incentives during the wage and price controls of World War II).

The resulting system aimed to relieve the individual of the "burden" of paying for his own health care by coercively imposing its costs on his neighbors. Today, for every dollar's worth of hospital care a patient consumes, that patient pays only about 3 cents out of pocket; the rest is paid by third-party coverage. And for the health care system as a whole, patients pay only about 14 percent.

Shifting the responsibility for health care costs away from the individuals who accrue them led to an explosion in spending. In a system in which someone else is footing the bill, consumers, encouraged to regard health care as a "right," demand medical services without having to consider their real price. When, through the 1970s and 1980s, this artificially inflated consumer demand sent expenditures soaring out of control, the government cracked down by enacting further coercive measures: price controls on medical services, cuts to medical benefits, and a crushing burden of regulations on every aspect of the health care system.

As each new intervention further distorted the health care market, driving up costs and lowering quality, belligerent voices demanded still further interventions to preserve the "right" to health care: from regulations mandating various forms of insurance coverage to Bush’s massive prescription drug bill.

The solution to this ongoing crisis is to recognize that the very idea of a "right" to health care is a perversion. There can be no such thing as a "right" to products or services created by the effort of others, and this most definitely includes medical products and services. Rights, as the Founders conceived them, are not claims to economic goods, but to freedoms of action.

You are free to see a doctor and pay him for his services--no one may forcibly prevent you from doing so. But you do not have a "right" to force the doctor to treat you without charge or to force others to pay for your treatment. The rights of some cannot require the coercion and sacrifice of others.

Real and lasting solutions to our health care problems require a rejection of the entitlement mentality in favor of a proper conception of rights. This would provide the moral basis for breaking the regulatory chains stifling the medical industry; for lifting the tax and regulatory incentives fueling our dysfunctional, employer-based insurance system; for inaugurating a gradual phase-out of all government health care programs, especially Medicare and Medicaid; and for restoring a true free market in medical care.

Such sweeping reforms would unleash the power of capitalism in the medical industry. They would provide the freedom for entrepreneurs motivated by profit to compete with each other to offer the best quality medical services at the lowest prices, driving innovation and bringing affordable medical care, once again, into the reach of all Americans.

Yaron Brook is the executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights in Washington, D.C. ARC is a division of the Ayn Rand Institute and promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand--author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

Euthanasia by Default

A Government Health Care system means that everyone is paid for, seen and treated by the government. In such a system, there may be many different doctors, clinics and hospitals, but at bottom there is only one customer - the government. Ultimately it is the government's tune to which all dance.

Since health care is supposedly free, people will not choose whether they want to go to the doctor based on any number of reasons, one of which is cost. They will take advantage of the benefits since they are there to be used. With no apparent cost to them over which they have control, why not?

But nothing man must do to maintain his life is without cost. It is an enormous fantasy to think otherwise. Because in a nation the size of the United States there is infinite demand for these benefits, the government will soon see that the expenses far outrun their tax revenues. They will have no choice but to raise taxes and/or cut benefits.

Raising taxes has its limits. Taxes on the populace cut into their standard of living. As taxes rise and the standard of living lowers, people carp and complain. The health care people take the brunt of this because they are the leading edge of Government Health Care. But they will have their excuses. After all, they are not ultimately responsible. (With Government Health Care the health care people will suffer a huge loss of good will and trust from people. Who can trust someone who is ultimately powerless in the matter and is not hired by your own judgment?)

The Government will then be attacked. The rising cost of living will prevent the Government from calling for more taxes. They will try to hide them in everything, but to hold down taxes, they will cut benefits. There will always be those who say that all the waiting, forestalling, shoddy methods and reduced benefits are worth it. They will be wrong. It doesn't have to be this way.

As the benefits are downsized, it must come out of someone's hide. There must be priorities. Of course it only makes sense to favor the productive taxpayers over the unproductive tax users. And the latter are the handicapped, the mentally incapacitated, the elderly, to name a few obvious categories of people. They will be left to die. Not in so many words, of course. Maybe they will be given some palliatives, but nothing that can really make a difference and cost the system money it doesn't have. Call this euthanasia. This is what it is - by default.

Actually euthanasia means a gentle and easy death. But some of the suffering will not be eased. "I'm so sorry. That's just the way it is," they say, and besides, that costs money too.

The real crime is that it doesn't have to be this way. Just recently drug stores wanted to bring in nurses and medical practitioners of various kinds to look at people who needed some medical advice. Given their knowledge they could help those they could and if not, recommend to them someone with more advanced knowledge. This idea, a product of economic freedom, was fought tooth and nail by the doctors. They don't want the competition.

Of course the doctors went to the law makers. "Outlaw such a solution," they said. The problem is that the law makers should not have the right to limit competition and new ideas. Their job is to catch criminals who violate authentic rights, not the false "economic rights." This is where the current mess of the health system goes off the track. Instead of freeing people to come up with new ideas on how to deliver health care, they kill it. As a result they indirectly kill people.

I got an email letter this morning from John Lewis, my Congressional Representative. He says, "I believe health care is a right." He presents no argument. He just believes it. In the wacko ethics of our culture, he sounds like a good man. But he is not.

Nothing can be a right that has to be produced by some other men. What is Mr. Lewis going to do? Take their labor and their property and give it to you? In days past, the plantation owners did the same thing except they were honest. They had slaves for their purposes. Now we have "The Great Pretenders" who enslave others for your purposes, they say. John Lewis is one of "The Great Pretenders."

Slavery is the darkest, most evil kind of advocacy and John Lewis is advocating it. A is A no matter how you dress it.

What is the antidote to the great problem of health care? Freedom. Freedom to think, to come up with new ideas for treatment and care, and freedom to deliver goods and services to people - those willing to trade something for them.

Freedom! Let it ring! From the Stone Mountain of Georgia to the foothills of Santa Barbara.

Some say, "We have to do something about this health care mess." That's true. But let's get to the cause of the problem and not rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. We are in this mess because the industry is tied in a knot. Government regulation and control is ubiquitous. Free it. Let our people go.

The other reason we have this mess is because people like John Lewis are telling people that health care is a right. He has to poke out his own eyes to not see the slavery in this.

People want to solve these problems. Being bound hand and foot they only have narrow avenues for action. Slave masters are hounding them.

Government is not the answer. It is the problem. Some of you will lose your loved ones because euthanasia will be its result. Death is final.

Nothing was more graphic than a piece I saw on TV. In Canada the medical industry is government run. A human has to wait at least a month for an MRI no matter what his ailment. It could be serious and need quick attention or not. In Canada, on the other hand, veterinary medicine is practiced in a free market. An animal can get an MRI the next day.

Wake up!