But John Edwards calls for something different -- a fiscal frumpery by which the cost of health care is somehow dissipated. This is done by obscuring the agent by which health care is provided. It has frequently been noticed by social philosophers that from about 1943, when income taxes were first collected so to speak at the source, via withholding, the average worker does not think of himself as being taxed -- because the instrument by which the money is taken is so automatic as to be more or less invisible. When an American worker is hired at $700 per week, he reckons his income not at $700, but at $500, which is the size of his paycheck.
Mr. Edwards speaks grandly about health coverage for 47 million people who do not now have it. But unless there is a diminution in the cost of health services, they will be paid for by somebody. If it is so that the 47 million without insurance are the identical 47 million who are the nation's poorest, then it might be said that all we are really engaging in is more redistribution. There is a case to be made for this, and indeed, redistribution has been accepted for years. The wealthiest 5 percent of Americans pay 54 percent of all taxes, which means they are paying taxes that would otherwise be paid by the 95 percent of Americans whose tax rates are lower.
Therefore, Mr. Edwards is doing nothing more than to call for increased taxes on the wealthy. They used to call that socialized medicine, when it was instituted by Great Britain after the war. It crossed the Atlantic into Canada, which is a tidy country in which to get sick, provided you can afford to travel across the border to an American doctor.