A Note About Universal Health Care

One of the platforms that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton ran on during the past election was universal health care. While the name and the idea of universal health care sounds exciting and hopeful, people have many misconceptions about howit would actually work.

First, let's get past the name - Universal Health Care. That means that there would be health care for everyone. Well, the last time I checked, our nation already offered health care for everyone, as long as you can afford it. And this is where the politicians decide that they can go crazy. They have determined that it is the right of every American to have health care, whether they can afford it or not, so they are proposing a universal health insurance paid for by the American taxpayer. This means that even if you do not get sick or injured, you are helping to foot the bill for all of those people who do get sick or injured and those requiring medication.

The cost of such a program would be hard to determine, but there is only one way to fund such a huge undertaking by the government - raise taxes. And since there are a vast number of people who can't work because of their medical problems, this leads to a redistribution of income from the able-bodied working man to those who are unable to work.

Don't get me wrong here - I don't have a problem with helping someone in their time of need. What I have a problem with is being forced to do so. I work day after day to provide for myself and my children in the best way that I can; to have the government take money that I have earned and give it to people who haven't earned it is an injustice, in my mind.

We have established in an earlier blog posting that government has never run any program at a surplus. Just as insurance companies now reserve the right to refuse coverage, the government would also be able to refuse coverage for anyone for any reason. And with the government mis-managing so many programs, the likely cause for refusal of coverage would be the lack of money to fund the coverage of everything for everyone. So how do we decide who gets their health care? Do we create waiting lists? Are these waiting lists based on a first-come-first-serve, or based on need? Who determines who needs care the most? How is this determination made? How can they create a system where favoritism or bribery for services would not be a likely happenstance? Imagine for a moment that you have a life-threatening illness or injury, but you can't get surgery or treatment because there is a waiting list. Does universal health coveraget sound like a noble ideal in this case?

But most importantly, we should consider things from the perspective of the healthcare provider. These men and women would no longer be able to choose their patients, but would be subjected to the government telling them which patients they could take. They would also be subjected to many more rules and regulations that would likely raise the cose of services. Since the government would be paying the cost of healthcare, it is very likely that it would begin to set the pay for doctors.

"Do you know what it takes to perform a brain operation? Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquire that skill? That was what I would not place at the disposal of men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of
enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun. I would not let them dictate the purpose for which my years of study had been spent, or the conditions of my work, or my choice of patients, or the amount of my reward. I observed that in all the discussions that preceded the enslavement of
medicine, men discussed everything - except the desires of the doctors. Men considered only the 'welfare' of the patients, with no thought for those who were to provide it. That a doctor should
have any right, desire, or choice in the matter, was regarded as irrelevant selfishness...That a man who's willing to work under compulsion is too dangerous a brute to entrust with a job in
the stockyards - never occured to those who proposed to help the sick by making life impossible for the healthy." (Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand)

So here we have it. The government has proposed to provide everyone with health coverage, but what this plan basically amounts to is benefits for the few at the expense of everyone. I, for one, would not want to see something like this happen to our country.