Public Funding is Government Control

Mr. Andrews -

This is another excellent essay and a spot on description of the Democrats current HC takeover gambit.

Once they establish the principle that the Federal government can set the rules, and fund a majority of the system, its Government run Health Care.

Of course, the hard core left would perfer it to be overtly governnment run/single payer/socialist medicine but their is hardly a pressing need for that once the control structure is in place. Essentially, all players in HC will be quasi-government agencies simply exectuting tasks delgated by the politicians/techonocrats on a limited for-profit basis.

And as you say, eventually another crisis will be formed and blamed on the "chaotic" free market as a pretext for government control.

I think you are much to generous in ascribing decent motives to D/leftist politicans on this issue. The key leaders in their ranks know that this is about politcal power and control only. Thats why its constantly pushed even in the face of opposition that would have dictated dropping it or at least significantly modifying it.

No they dont need a public option right now, but they MUST have manadotry insurance as thats the political hook they want.

As bad as this may sound, it would be really better if we shifted immediately to a socialist medicine system vice the incremental takeover. At least the inevitable collapse can be directly ascribed to the state takeover vice the damnation of individual liberty and free markets that will come part and parcel with their current stealth approach!

I am glad you enjoyed it, as you have been lobbying so hard for me to write more on this topic.

In theory your final statement makes sense, but on the other hand, because of human nature, it doesn't. It may take a while for the ills of full nationalization to be felt, and as we see with public education, or social security, once a program has been around of a while, giving away "free" things, even when it shows its weaknesses, or even fails outright, people can't imagine life without it. Just talk about shutting down public schools, no matter how bad they are, and people think you are insane.

Once we fully nationalize medicine, there is probably no going back. Granted, there are rare exceptions. For example, England seems to be coming to its senses slowly. (Though that may be partly due to their awareness being raised through our debate... though that didn't work for Canada.) But the exeptions are just that, rare exceptions. Once something is nationalized, it usually takes the overthrow of the state to make it private once more. Not always, but more often than not.

Concerning blaming the free market, you might enjoy parts 2-5 of my Bad Economics series. Several of them point out the ways the free market is blamed for the failures of the state, though that is not their main point. But they are recent enough you may have read them already.

I also recommend these:

http://andrews.blogtownhall.com/2008/06/28/authoritarian_oi l_talk.thtml

http://andrews.blogtownhall.com/2009/05/21/speculators_agai n.thtml

http://whiners.blogtownhall.com/2008/07/22/those_darn_specu lators.thtml

They were written during the nonsensical debates fueled (no pun intended) by the oil price spike of last year and point out how the free market is often criticized for doing what it should, letting prices reflect supply and demand.

Mr. Andrews -

I think you are essentially correct that the decline that occurs after government takeover is usually very slow since this country built up strong institutions in most areas of life that take time to errode. Also, since they dont touch every citizen equally, most bad results likely go unnoticed by the general public until they reach the crisis point (ie education).

But I do think HC would be much much differenet as ALL would be forced to participate and would feel immediate negative changes to their wallets and qaulity of service immediately so I think in this case oppostion to the intervention would rapidly form.

This isnt 1947 or 1950ish health care we are talking about (the time frame when western eurpoe adopted socialist medicine schemes) - the change from 21st century care available basically on demand to something less then that would be immediately noticeable.

Thats why I say perhaps in this case it would be best to let the socialist "own it" to definitely assign blame.

However, thats really not morally defensable for conservatives as we would be dooming millions to die at the hands of the state if we allow socialist medicine to occur. Such a violation of our individual rights (the right to life) cannot be allowed to occur!