July 26, 2007
If They Really Want To Socialize Medicine,
this is very definitely the way to go — as a state project, not a federal affair.
When Louis Brandeis praised the 50 states as “laboratories of democracy,” he didn’t claim that every policy experiment would work. So we hope the eyes of America will turn to Wisconsin, and the effort by Madison Democrats to make that “progressive” state a Petri dish for government-run health care.
This exercise is especially instructive, because it reveals where the “single-payer,” universal coverage folks end up. Democrats who run the Wisconsin Senate have dropped the Washington pretense of incremental health-care reform and moved directly to passing a plan to insure every resident under the age of 65 in the state. And, wow, is “free” health care expensive. The plan would cost an estimated $15.2 billion, or $3 billion more than the state currently collects in all income, sales and corporate income taxes. It represents an average of $510 a month in higher taxes for every Wisconsin worker.
Employees and businesses would pay for the plan by sharing the cost of a new 14.5% employment tax on wages. Wisconsin businesses would have to compete with out-of-state businesses and foreign rivals while shouldering a 29.8% combined federal-state payroll tax, nearly double the 15.3% payroll tax paid by non-Wisconsin firms for Social Security and Medicare combined.
Talk about ruthless mathematics…
Given the trial and error (hit or miss?) process that seems to accompany the regular dose of Murphy’s Law whenever government descends and the inevitable resulting demand for additional funding via taxes collected from We, the People, I am reminded for some reason of dominoes.
In countries whose citizens “benefit” from socialized medicine, taxes are well beyond oppressive by American standards — and all too much of that is due to the cost of their government administrated health care.
By the time a healthy taxpayer is done being taxed, he/she will have been charged more of his/her hard earned pay by the government than it might have cost for a private HMO — or because he/she is in satisfactory or better physical condition, been, quite simply, ripped off: Perhaps he/she hasn’t felt the need for medical coverage just yet. But he/she must be protected whether he/she likes it or not.
Hmmm…that sounds awfully like a personal choice that belongs exclusively to said taxpayer, not unlike to wear or not to wear a motorcycle helmet, strap on a seat belt, order a blood-rare burger, etc, etc…
But it doesn’t strike me as anything the framers of the U.S. Constitution would have endorsed.
But…back to the issue at hand –
What we have here is a state experimenting with socialized medicine. While I brook none of that bullshit on a federal level, I am a fervent believer in states’ rights; If a collection of idiots living within the confines of their own political subdivision exercise their voting rights to elect leaders of the socialist persuasion, so be it. Look at California.
For that matter, look at what the left is trying to do in Wisconsin (damn, I’d love to deliver a “cheesy” pun, but who wants to kick a state when it be about to be “down”?).
There’s absolutely no mystery why our greatest complaints are in the arena of government-delivered services and the fewest in market-delivered services. In the market, there are the ruthless forces of profit, loss and bankruptcy that make producers accountable to us. In the arena of government-delivered services, there’s no such accountability. For example, government schools can go for decades delivering low-quality services, and what’s the result? The people who manage it earn higher pay. It’s nearly impossible to fire the incompetents. And, taxpayers, who support the service, are given higher tax bills.
Oh — kay!
Before we buy into single-payer health care systems like Canada’s and the United Kingdom’s, we might want to do a bit of research. The Vancouver, British Columbia-based Fraser Institute annually publishes “Waiting Your Turn.” Its 2006 edition gives waiting times, by treatments, from a person’s referral by a general practitioner to treatment by a specialist. The shortest waiting time was for oncology (4.9 weeks). The longest waiting time was for orthopedic surgery (40.3 weeks), followed by plastic surgery (35.4 weeks) and neurosurgery (31.7 weeks).
As reported in the June 28 National Center for Policy Analysis’ “Daily Policy Digest,” Britain’s Department of Health recently acknowledged that one in eight patients waits more than a year for surgery. France’s failed health care system resulted in the deaths of 13,000 people, mostly of dehydration, during the heat spell of 2003. Hospitals stopped answering the phones, and ambulance attendants told people to fend for themselves.
So now, we have problems on both the buy side and the sell side of government run healthcare.
Bummer.
I don’t think most Americans would like more socialized medicine in our country. By the way, I have absolutely no problem with people wanting socialism. My problem is when they want to drag me into it.
That has got to be the single most perfect definition of belief in the rights of Americans that I’ve ever seen. What happens to we believers in the Constitution once that great document has been violated and pissed upon by our very Congress?
The long and the short of it should be that we can thank our lucky stars that this entire exercise is as it should be, a single state event. The only problems I can envision there are the inevitably tragic probable results for Wisconsin taxpayers and what they would invite: FAILURE.
Failure attracts today’s liberal-ruled Democrats — while socialism has long since proven itself a blatant mistake, these so-called intellectual elites, followers of eco-socio-economic theories based solely on Utopian fantasies, want to repeat this same failure.
On the other hand, ownership of immense bureaucracies also attracts the Democrats, and the number of bureaucracies that would emanate from a parasitic healthcare core would constitute tax money negligently flushed down the commode of liberalism. So what’s new?
http://hardastarboard.mu.nu/wp-trackback.php?p=714
July 26th, 2007 at 8:47 am
Would you expect any less from a state where they drink beer with their cheese? Wine is unheard of in mosquito country…and we recall those northwoods populists gave us Joe McCarthy.
July 26th, 2007 at 9:32 am
[...] Seth takes a look at socialized medicine and fisks the state of Wisconsin’s’ plan as an example of the costs. Be ready for some shock and awe. [...]
July 26th, 2007 at 10:05 am
“Before we buy into single-payer health care systems like Canada’s and the United Kingdom’s, we might want to do a bit of research.”
Democrats and especially the Hildabeast are not interested in research or facts they are only interested in Marxist/Socialism and using health care as a catylist to being the change of this nation from a free republic to a Marxist/Socialist state in which they have control over every aspect of our lives!
That is their true goal and the issue of helath care is the easiest and quickest way to begin this transition, because it is something that they can readily lie about which effects all Americans. They know that most Americans are not like you and I and actually research so that we can make our own opinion and decision on issues.
This is how they are attempting to twist the American people through false statistics, out right lies and deception into following like lambs to the slaughter into their Marxist/Socialist, “Utopia.”
July 26th, 2007 at 7:55 pm
Seth, and BB-Idaho since you are here…I know this is way off topic, but:
I am back from a lengthy absence, and just wanted you to know that you are welcome to drop back in. I am trying to catch up my normal click list!
July 27th, 2007 at 1:25 am
BB –
And this from someone who admits to drinking Moose Drool with his spuds.
Ken –
This is totally true, and totally inexcusable since they are elected leaders of the United States. The Constitution is supposed to mean something to them, but apparently that’s too much to ask.
Robert —
See you over at your place.
July 27th, 2007 at 2:19 am
Our NHS system employs more “Administrators” than medics - and their “Patient Assessment” criteria will ensure that if you are over 70 you are unlikely to get the treatment you need - unless you know someone who can threaten to sue, or you’re a medic and know how to manipulate the system.
There needs to be a balance - and you also need to shoot every Civil Servant who suggests that they should “manage” such a service. They are incapable of managing anything. Just take a look at the state of this country, in partiicular our Health SErvice. £84 billion a year, waiting lists to see specialists, patients denied the drugs they need because of cost and hospitals closing so that more bureaucrats can have nicer offices and bigger salaries. That is the reality of “National” Health Services!
July 27th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
OK, so MooseDrool & Spuds isn’t up to Conservative standards. But, I submit that the stuff those cheesehead badgers consume with their bratwurst & saurkraut is unpronouncable: see: http://didyoudrinkmybeer.blogspot.com/2007/06/ah-ah-leinenkugel.html socialized medicine is cheap up there because locals subscribe to Homer Simpson’s “alcohol is the cause of and solution to all life’s problems”, er except for the liberal enclave around Madison.
July 27th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
But I thought free health care for everybody was supposed to be free!
July 27th, 2007 at 10:20 pm
Gray Monk –
Similar accounts of the realities of government-run healthcare in both Canada and Britain are legion among those of us who seek our information outside the mainstream media, yet one reads/hears no mention of those “shortcomings” among MSM venues or from the socialists who have taken control of our Democratic Party.
It comes as no surprise, since the majority of the Democrats’ agendas, presented with full disclosure of all details and attachments, would be unacceptable to the American people and are therefore always packaged in stealth.
July 27th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
BB –
My grandmother used to serve up a great spud kugel when I was a wee lad, but it never had a line in it.
Speaking of spuds, I had some in mashed condition with the excellent, 20 ounce-ish cut of melt-in-your-mouth prime rib I bought earlier at the Lincoln Quality Meat Market. Nope, no beer with it but if there was, it would have been a Pilsner-Urquel, truly a fine wine among beers, just to do justice to the fabulous prime rib.
July 27th, 2007 at 10:59 pm
Uncle Pavian –
“Free” evidently conjures up a different meaning in the minds of liberal politicians than it does in the minds of the rest of us.
When I worked in a casino several years ago, there was a perfect and commonly repeated analogy for the economics of the Democrats.
A person sits in front of a dollar slot machine wherein 777 will pay $1,000.00 with three coins in. Within hours, the player has put about $3,000.00 into the machine, trying to win that thousand bucks. Broke, the player goes home.
When the Democrats do the same thing, they never get up and go home — there’s always plenty of ready money, generously donated by taxpayers, to continue flushing down the machine in hopes of winning that $1,000.00.
July 29th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
Regarding your last comment, good analogy. That’s exactly what they do!
I’ve talked to people in real life who believe socialized medicine would be a great idea. I try to enlighten them, but it’s about as fruitful an excercise as banging my head against a wall. When people make up their minds to remain ignorant they tend to remain ignorant.
“Moose Drool!” LOL! What a disgusting name for a beer!
July 29th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Gayle –
The MSM has done a great job of propagandizing the more gullible among us by managing to sketch the usual Utopian left agenda with their consistant omission of the tragic downsides. As a result, the country is full of people who have been brainwashed to ignore bold realities even when confronted by them.
The resulting massive taxation that would be one of the two major bi-products of government run healthcare would be no problem for the left, just another way to tax the people into oblivion and obstruct the economy as a whole, and the severe downgrading of healthcare in practice, the other bi-product, is something they are incapable of acknowledging as their media takes great pains to avoid describing the precedents set in other countries.
BB sets great store by Moose Drool, so if I run across some, I’ll certainly give it a try (with my eyes closed, so as to avoid reading the label).
July 30th, 2007 at 7:14 am
I’d love to deliver a “cheesy” pun, but who wants to kick a state when it be about to be “down”?).
heck go for it Seth!..lol…talk to Canadians whose parents have to be
left in hallways and then see how the Dems love socialized medicine..pfft!
great overview my friend and hey thanks for the vis to my site..nice to see ya there!:)
July 30th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
Great Post Seth,
There is NO way I am having a damn thing to do with socialized medicine.
I have to go to the Dr alot and if they try and take any more money from me, or force me to do anything I dont want to do, or take something away from me, someone is gonna get hurt.
Congress has failed.
And we are only 8 months into their rule.
For the moment, we are screwed.
July 30th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
Oh Seth…. Yooooohoooooooo!
I’m back! Speaking of socialism, I’ve an idea…
Let’s MARCH ON DC in 2008. I’ve posted about it. I’m furious and I’m not gonna take it any longer!!!!
http://thepugilstick.blogspot.com/2007/07/lets-roll.html
It’s time to act. We need to kick some butt in DC and let’s do it in a big way!
July 30th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
Angel –
H/T James Taranto, here’s another example of govt run healthcare working for the people:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2137719,00.html
Sorry I haven’t gotten around as much as I like, but as usual, things came up that have kept me away from the computer ‘way too much in the last couple of weeks — that seems to be a done deal, at least for now.
Marie –
Recently, thanks entirely to the grass-roots success in quelling the immigration “reform” bill and reinstating the John Doe provision, I have begun to appreciate, once again, that We, The People can indeed compel our politicians to do what we want rather than what they want.
All that remains is for the American people to get the true facts re what government controlled healthcare actually entails (price paid, product quality, etc), and perhaps we’ll be able to hammer home our will once again via phone, fax, postal service and email should they attempt to inflict that proven failure on us.
It would inflict thousands of dollars more a year in taxes on working people and deliver a fraction of the availability and quality of healthcare now available.
July 30th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
Atheling2 –
Welcome back!
A march on DC would be a good start — if it is big enough, even the MSM couldn’t ignore it, though you can bet their spin machine would be working tripletime to diffuse its message.
I hope this means you’re back to stay.
July 30th, 2007 at 8:24 pm
Hope so! But you know me, I have to get away once in a while!
Let’s work on this march! Why should demonstrations be relegated to moonbats? Let’s show them what we’re talkin’ about!
I think part of the reason why the government won’t fix things is because they know we conservatives will complain, but do nothing.
No more activist judges! WE THE PEOPLE ARE THE ACTIVISTS!
July 30th, 2007 at 11:18 pm
Atheling2 –
I’m all for it, but much work has to be given to publicizing it, so enough people (lots of them) know about it. This will take a lot of participation to organize.
Having never been involved in organizing anything like this, I’ll compose and send emails to some people who have, and try to get some feedback.