Colorado slouches toward socialist medicine
ROSSPUTIN BLOG
re "Bill to insure all Coloradans: $26 billion" (Aspen Times, 8/25/07)
aspentimes.com
To the Editor:
Proposals coming from or reviewed by the Blue Ribbon Commission for Health Care are nothing short of economic and medical insanity. So many of the arguments and assumptions are fundamentally flawed that it is hard to believe Coloradans would be stupid enough to support any of the proposals, but a majority was gullible enough to support Referendum C that I suppose anything is possible.
The first major incorrect assumption is that any Coloradans do not have "access to health insurance". Everyone does, and the state already has CoverColorado, a program for people who get denied from standard commercial carriers. Second, most people who do not have health insurance are either simply in between jobs and likely to have it again within a few months or else they are already eligible for government insurance if they chose to sign up. Then there's a small percentage of the uninsured who are simply young and healthy and rationally choose not to spend their money on health insurance. Almost every uninsured person in the state could be insured if they chose to without changing the current system.
Another set of major errors comes from believing that having government-run health care will either control costs or maintain quality. All the evidence from places that have socialized medicine is that costs spiral out of control, quality plummets, and both patients and doctors are deeply unsatisfied with the system. There's a reason that a person diagnosed with cancer in the US has a much better chance of living for 5 years than a person diagnosed with cancer in England, France, Canada, or any other place with socialized medicine. In addition to our much higher survival rates, we do not have the sort of rationing that those places have had to implement in order to keep the system from completely bankrupting the country. The Canadian Supreme Court recently ruled in a case that access to a waiting list is not the same as access to health care, and allowed people to buy private insurance and see private doctors. But the Canadians (and Europeans) who can afford it come to the US for their care. That's no accident.
To the extent that we believe health insurance is too expensive, the causes are two: a lack of competition among health insurance policy providers (primarily because of laws preventing competition across state lines and because of laws requiring coverages that people don't actually want) and the way the current system keeps health care consumers from feeling enough cost when they go to doctors and hospitals. If you subsidize something, people will use too much of it. If that something is important and you over-stress the system's capacity the results can be disastrous. Just ask someone with prostate cancer in England (twice as likely to die within 5 years as someone with the same diagnosis here.)
We should learn from the lessons of Referendum C that no tax increase is ever enough for big-government liberals, and that no promise they make that "this is all we need" should ever be taken seriously. But the cost of Ref C will be invisible compared to the cost of socialized medicine. Not only will the cost of medicine skyrocket, but quality will decline as top-notch physicians leave the state. Between the reputation the state will get for sub-standard medical care and the insane tax burden required for socialized medicine, it will no longer be a desirable place to work or to start a company. Current residents and businesses will flee the state, especially healthy and productive people. Poor and unhealthy people will move here for their "free lunch" health care, leaving the legislature with a tax revenue "shortfall" for which they will then come to the remaining people for a tax increase.
"Universal coverage" is a pleasant-sounding euphemism for socialized medicine. It will be an expensive disaster for the state, and I hope the prospect causes Colorado voters to make smarter decisions than they did in the last election. |
