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TechnoratiWhat is more, socialistic principles fail to take into account man's depravity – his fall away from God and into sin. The socialist contends if man's environment is changed, he will change. He'll be better to his neighbor. It discounts man's need for redemption in Christ and contends that if all have an equal share, then there is less reason to war and steal, etc. But the fact is socialistic principles change nothing about human nature and only concentrates economic power in the hands of a few sinful individuals who are more able to exploit the public.
Sven Larson, a policy analyst for the John William Pope Civitas Institute, notes all the ways these negatives would play out in a government-funded universal health care system, which is simply a form of socialized medicine.
• It would outlaw private health insurance and give government bureaucrats the exclusive right to set reimbursement rates for physicians, clinics and hospitals. This would not only create supply shortages, but would also likely produce a black market health-care system.
• It would transform the state into the sole purchaser of medical drugs and equipment, hampering cost containment and inviting corruption.
• It would destroy professional freedom for medical professionals. The government would be the sole determiner of the number of medical professionals that could work.
• It would of necessity cap health spending. According to data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, American health providers increase medical technology by 7 percent per year. Such increases are necessary if new technology is to make its way into hospitals and clinics. If the cap for a government-funded universal health-care system like the one proposed in California had been enacted nationwide in 1960, the cumulative effect would have been to lower current technological standards in hospitals to 1982 levels.
One can already see how liberty and justice, which are unalienable rights – God-given rights – are significantly diminished by such a proposal.
Most importantly, since a government-funded universal health-care system would come at a heavy financial burden to the state, one could only imagine how, over time, it would affect right-to-life issues. It most certainly would make abortion and euthanasia readily available. Children with gestational issues of retardation, spina bifida, etc. would likely require abortion. Vulnerable patients such as the chronically ill, disabled or elderly would be allowed to die as in the Terri Schiavo case, or possibly even terminated.
A government-funded universal health-care system will never provide what its champions promise. Why? Because socialism never provides what it promises and neither can socialized medicine. Instead of providing good health coverage for all, it will ultimately lessen the quality of care for all. As Ludwig Von Mises wrote in Liberalism, "There is simply no other choice than this: either abstain from interference in the free play of the market, or to delegate the entire management of production and distribution to the government." Is the incompetence of the government in responding to the needs of Hurricane Katrina victims so soon removed from America's memory that it's now willing to place its most personal issues – health-care issues regarding quality of life, life and death – into the hands of a federal bureaucracy that would be approximately three times the size of the Pentagon? Continue »
