Tag Archives: Socialized medicine

Socialized Medicine Is No Cure: Britain’s Broken Benefit System, by Andrew Ash

Posted on November 15, 2022 | Leave a comment

If socialism ever had to run on its record nothing in world would be socialized. From Andrew Ash at gatestoneinstitute.org:

  • Claiming that conservatives are less compassionate because many basic needs are not offered for free can miss the point. Too often what is offered are words; what is actually ends up being delivered may be sorely lacking — as disillusioned citizens in places such as Venezuela and Cuba have found out the hard way.
  • Of course, one does not become a “better person” by voting for giveaways that are all too often fraudulent or semi-fraudulent — a bait-and-switch in which what is delivered ends up being far from what has been promised, if delivered at all. For many people, however, it might satisfy a need to be perceived as being on the side of the “good” — which social promises always are; why else would a public buy into them?
  • Over time, as governments began to separate themselves from religion, many responsibilities of the church became transferred to the state. The gradual progression of socialist and Marxist thought, meanwhile, further increased the divide, while at the same time expanding the remit of governmental reach into people’s daily lives.
  • Immigration, changes in the workplace, a massive increase in disability payments (along with what constitutes “disability”), the length of time people remain unemployed and an increasingly bloated bureaucracy have all contributed to breaking the back of an outdated system.
  • If your needs are immediate, the struggle for medical care is even more uphill: the NHS is now advising patients to consider private healthcare.

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Covid and the Escalation of Medical Tyranny, from The Mises Institute

Posted on October 9, 2020 | 1 comment

By all means, let’s socialize medicine and give government complete control over our health and well being. From the Mises Institute at mises.org:

The coronavirus crisis has served as a powerful tool in highlighting many of the faults that previously existed in society. It exposed which politicians have an inherent need to control and which ones are guided by humility. It reminded us of the political power that lies in fear, and how crucial it is to be skeptical of prevailing narratives. It emphasized the different economic realities for those who live paycheck to paycheck and those who benefit from economic financialization.

It should also make perfectly clear the danger of handing over healthcare to the state.

Already we have seen agents of the state, at various levels, seek to leverage a viral medical crisis to expand their power. Governors and local officials have sought to use vague “emergency” powers to lock down businesses and to create criminal penalties, and have then attacked any attempts by judiciaries to rein in their actions. Judges have sought to leverage the power they hold in deciding child custody to force citizens to make medical decisions they disagree with. Anointed government experts, such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, in spite of his own inconsistencies, have been held up as the final word on science, at the expense of the voices of other credible scientists.

Whether by design or by the instinctual reaction, we have seen a the concerted effort of government authorities—amplified by a corporate press with a particularly vivid political agenda, and supported by the credentials of an academic landscape that suffers from ideological capture—to weaponize a centralized scientific narrative for the purpose of achieving certain policy ends. It is appropriate that some have dubbed this union “the Cathedral,” as we have seen the divine right of kings renewed in the divine right of approved scientists.

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Socialized Medicine Is Not the Answer, by Doug Casey

Posted on February 29, 2020 | 1 comment

Socialized anything is not the answer except to the question: what inevitably makes any situation worse? From Doug Casey at caseyresearch.com:

Editor’s note: One of the biggest topics facing Americans today is the issue of healthcare… and whether the government should play a role in providing it.

It’s unlikely this debate will fade away soon… as the coronavirus crisis continues to spread throughout the world and across America.

So in today’s Conversations With Casey, our founder Doug Casey addresses the question of whether the government should be involved in healthcare… and explains why our current system is essentially “criminal malpractice”…

Daily Dispatch: Previously, we discussed health, so I want to stay on that subject. In particular, I want to focus on a part of the health industry that I know interests you – or perhaps frustrates you, would be a better way to put it – regarding State involvement with healthcare, including socialized medicine.

One of the big talking points among Democratic candidates is their championing of more government involvement in healthcare. In your view, does that create more problems than it helps to prevent?

Doug Casey: Well, in the first place, don’t call it healthcare. That’s something you provide for yourself through proper diet, exercise, nutrition, and lifestyle. The State likes that term because it sounds friendly and positive; the average person wants to believe that “they” will somehow keep him in good health, for free. What they actually provide, at best, is medical care – which is about medicines and surgery, trauma and disease. Nobody wants to be reminded of those things. So don’t confuse it with healthcare.

Apart from that, only an idiot wants the State involved in medicine; socialized medicine is not the answer to health problems. In fact, it’s reasonable to say that it’s the cause of many of these problems. It reduces the efficiency of medical care to that of the Post Office, Amtrak, or your local DMV. The fact that US medical care is no better than, but between twice and 10 times the cost of similar care in, other places in the world is 100% the fault of the government’s laws and regulations.

Getting the State involved in medicine is criminal malpractice.

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How Socialized Medicine Kills The Patient & Robs The Taxpayer, by Thomas DiLorenzo

Posted on November 8, 2019 | 2 comments

Socialized medicine and the efforts to sell it in the US are both built on lies. Excerpted from Thomas DiLorenzo’s book The Problem with Socialism… via zerohedge.com:

When it comes to something as important as healthcare, the last thing anyone should want is for the entire system to become a government-run monopoly…

In fact, socialist healthcare is based almost entirely on deception.

It works this way:

  • …patients usually pay nothing (or a minuscule fee) at the point of service, thereby forming the false impression that healthcare is “free.”
  • Because it is “free,” consumer demand for healthcare skyrockets…
  • …doctors prescribe hordes of often unnecessary tests, because they are “free” to the patient…
  • …The costs of providing healthcare, including everything from nursing to ambulance services, inevitably go through the roof.

…As any freshman economics student should know, declaring anything to be a “free” good or service will cause an explosion of demand, which in turn will ratchet up the costs of providing the good or service.

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Socialized Medicine Won’t Solve America’s Obesity Problem, by Ryan McMaken

Posted on October 24, 2018 | 1 comment

Obesity is the public health problem nobody wants to talk about, perhaps because so many people are obese. From Ryan McMaken at mises.org:

Last week, researchers at the the University of Washington released a new study predicting that US life expectancy would fall further and further behind other countries over the next twenty years. Life expectancy will continue to increase, but at a slower rate than many other countries.

Whether or not these predictions ever come true, depend on many of the study’s assumptions also coming true.

Nevertheless, it’s not hard to see why the general health of Americans isn’t exactly headed toward a renaissance.

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Socialized Medicine: A Dose of Reality, by Ileana Johnson

Posted on March 31, 2018 | Leave a comment

Too bad college kids in favor of socialized medicine can’t be given a one-way ticket to a country with socialized medicine when they’re sick. From Ileana Johnson at thegatestoneinstitute.org:

  • Although Britons do have affordable access to primary-care doctors, and everyone in the UK is covered through high taxes, they are subjected to extensive waiting periods for specialists, surgeries and hospitalization. The fact is that many patients die waiting for treatment.
  • Rather than rejecting the basic free-market principles of the US economy — as a 2016 Harvard University survey found that most do — young Americans would do well to ask themselves why it is that so many people from countries with socialized medicine flock to the United States for treatment.

According to a recent Pew poll, support for universal health care, provided and paid for by the federal government, is higher among American millennials than among older generations. Young Americans seem to believe that socialized medicine is a “cure-all” for health-care ills in the United States, as it ostensibly is elsewhere, such as Canada and Britain.

Unfortunately, there are facts that would appear to put this fantasy to rest by the facts — for instance, the tragic and untimely death of a 20-year-old British woman in her dorm room last March. Victoria Hills, a first-year student, died of an ear infection, after “postpon[ing] visiting her campus general practitioner because her student loan had not come through and she couldn’t afford the prescription.”

There seems to be a myth that all medical care, procedures and drugs are free under a socialized system. Although Britons do have affordable access to primary-care doctors, and everyone in the UK is covered through high taxes, they are subjected to extensive waiting periods for specialists, surgeries and hospitalization. The fact is that in the West, as the ability of physicians to provide services becomes stretched, many patients die waiting for treatment.

To continue reading: Socialized Medicine: A Dose of Reality

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