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Defenders of socialized medicine often respond that the nation's V.A. system proves that government-provided health insurance can work. What these activists fail to acknowledge, however, is that the V.A. system is not a form of health "insurance." Rather, it is a social safety net provided by taxpayers to veterans in recognition of the great contribution that veterans have made to our nation. It is a benefit that they have earned, not a society-wide system of health insurance. Accordingly, this well-deserved reward to our nation's veterans does not provide a parallel to socialized medicine.

The first ones to advocate socialized medicine are also the first ones to decry the shabby treatment vets get at veteran's hospitals (i.e. Walter Reed, which is now closed or is closing soon). What makes socialized medicine proponents think that the government would handle health care for the average citizen any differently or better than veteran's hospitals do.

Good article in parts showing the disaster of health care schemes in states. And he highlighted a fact liberals and conservatives alike pretend doesn’t exist.. The laws of supply and demand affect healthcare like any other part of the economy. Conservatives have argued to me that adding more supply in terms of doctors, pa’s, nurse physicians etc would not help the situation.

But on the other hand it shows the federalist model of state action won’t work for states at least not like normal programs. Old people, unhealthy and poor would move to the states with government healthcare.. While productive, healthy young people would leave because of confiscatory taxation levels.

Last year, Massachusetts passed a prematurely-celebrated health care initiative entitled "Commonwealth Care" that provided state-subsidized coverage and required all residents to purchase insurance. State residents who fail to obtain insurance are penalized with additional state taxes. The law also required employers to either pay for health insurance or cough up a hefty tax penalty for each employee that they cannot cover.
Anyone who has passed Econ 101 could have predicted what would happen next, but it nevertheless caught government bureaucrats by surprise.

Across the state, primary care providers are now turning away patients, and waiting times have lengthened because physicians receive below-market payments along with an influx of new patients. Thus, Massachusetts bureaucrats are learning a lesson that even Communist bloc countries learned decades ago: when government social planners artificially increase demand and reduce supply via price controls and rationing, shortages and inferior quality quickly follow.

I'm still agnostic over Mitt Romney, but this part of the article is not good news for him, because he was partly responsible for Commonwealth Care. I'm sure his people will blame it on the Democrat state congress who partnered with him on this program.

On another note, I've got one little quibble with the author's logic in the following sentence: ". . . waiting times have lengthened because physicians receive below-market payments along with an influx of new patients." Below-market payments do not result in longer waiting times. Instead, I'd say that the influx of new patients is the only cause for the new delays.

“And this is an idea that so many wish to emulate in other states and on a national scale?”

But the proponents of universal health care will make two claims:
- This only shows that it must be universal. If all states have it, then individual states like WI won’t be penalized for doing the ‘right thing’.
- If it is universal, then every one will have a stake in ensuring it is properly funded and support increased taxes to provide the highest quality of care.

All socialists believe that the only reason socialism has failed in the past is that it has not been tried on a large enough scale and that this time it will be different if only they are in charge.

Unfortunately, many people will be sucked in by promises of “free” health care. What they will expect is to have all the access to health care they currently enjoy and pay little or nothing for it. The Democrats will promise, as usual, that the “rich” will pay for this or dream up some other tax scheme like taxing cigars at $20 to pay for it. The bottom line is that under Hillary care or other single government payer schemes, health care will be rationed. I think Americans would be shocked to find themselves in a health care plan that looks like the VA.

Universal health care is coming, be it HillaryCare or HillaryCare Lite ala Mitt Romney.

The Rats have used the MSM to brainwash the masses thatUHC is needed and desirable and US corporation's are starting to buy into the idea due to international competition pressures from the one world economy. Rino's will join the Rats to save their electoral hides.

Is it too late for UHC to be stopped or is it time to start framing the debate to get a plan that does the least damage ?

With government health care, electronic medical records, and the Bank Secrecy Act, we are headed for the Total State, where with the flash of a badge, any official will be able to see all your financial records and all your medical records.

We can pretend that “strong laws” will “protect” these records, but the news is full of constant dribbles of stories about this or that data breach, this or that clerk who sold information for a bribe, this or that stolen notebook contain the data and this or that backup tape that was stolen from the parked car of an intern who was told to take the tape home at night for “offsite storage” and bring it back in the morning.

The only way to prevent this outrageous violation of liberty is to prevent and preclude government from having this data and this power in the first place.

The article is excellent, but it fails to deal effectively with the mindset of the Left.
Even if one could prove as conclusively as the law of gravity that national health insurance will fail, they Left would still clamor for socialized medicine.
They are oblivious to argument. They want it because they want it. Belief in socialized medicine is a “moral” issue for them. They have demanded it for so long that they cannot abandon it now without a serious mental disturbance.
The only way to deal with the Left on this issue is to defeat them every time they propose any sort of program that might morph into socialized medicine.
When you think of national health insurance, remember the old Arab proverb: once a camel gets his nose in the tent, the rest of his body will soon follow.
For this reason alone, it is essential to prevent the expansion of the CHIPS programs to the degree the Democrats have proposed. GWB is correct when he notes that a ten fold expansion of CHIPS is but the first step toward socialized medicine. Of course, its politically difficult, especially in this climate - to oppose health care for kids, but opposition is essential. If this country ever enacts national health insurance, the fundamental relationship between the federal government and the citizenry will be altered fundamentally. If people want to preserve the federal structure of the United States, defeat of national health insurance - under any guise and for any reason - is a necessity.

Massachusetts, which famously introduced its own effort toward mandatory universal coverage, provides another unfortunate example of the failure of government-paid health care.
Last year, Massachusetts passed a prematurely-celebrated health care initiative entitled "Commonwealth Care" that provided state-subsidized coverage and required all residents to purchase insurance. State residents who fail to obtain insurance are penalized with additional state taxes. The law also required employers to either pay for health insurance or cough up a hefty tax penalty for each employee that they cannot cover.
Anyone who has passed Econ 101 could have predicted what would happen next, but it nevertheless caught government bureaucrats by surprise.
Across the state, primary care providers are now turning away patients, and waiting times have lengthened because physicians receive below-market payments along with an influx of new patients. Thus, Massachusetts bureaucrats are learning a lesson that even Communist bloc countries learned decades ago: when government social planners artificially increase demand and reduce supply via price controls and rationing, shortages and inferior quality quickly follow.

This is Mitt Romney's baby

HillaryCare, aka “Universal Health Care”, or just plain socialized (government-run) health insurance is just another phase to A Culture of Lies.

Supporters of Utopian government (the idolatrous concept that government can bring humanity good that humanity could not otherwise achieve on its own) follow the same play book: seize a universal human activity that most people do well enough, but some people do not. We had this with public education, retirement pensions (social “security”) and now with health care.

Claim that for the sake of those who cannot perform it, government must. Propose a government program that seems, on its face, to be adequate, and propose taxes to pay for it. These taxes will consume all the funds that lower and middle-income families spend on this function, thus making government their only way to get the function accomplished. The wealthy, of course, are given a way out.

But this is a Big Lie and part of the Culture of Lies. Government cannot perform an economic function as well as private business can. Even when it does, it cannot do it for long, or without exempting itself from economic reality.

The Culture of Lies is how well government does. How much, in total, are we spending for public education, compared to how much it would cost if we could send our children to any of the tens of thousands of private schools that we would have? We spend a staggering amount of tax money to educate a single child to the point of graduation from High School, in the extreme case such as Washington DC, it costs almost $1.5 million to graduate a single youth who is competent at their grade level in math.

The Culture of Lies is extended in how well Social Security performs. Happily, we have some legislative mistakes that allowed one county in Texas to set up its own replacement for Social Security. Their retirees enjoy payments that are some three times that of the federal program. Congress won’t make that mistake again. The Texas example, extended nationwide, documents how many trillions of dollars are just destroyed by how the system is designed.

There is no way that socialized medical care will cost less or deliver better service that the mess we presently have. If it does, it will be for very selected and accidental backwaters or eddies in the main current of wealth destruction, not to mention destruction of choice and liberty.