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Five More Reasons to Oppose Obama’s “Single-Payer” Collectivized Healthcare

by T.L. James | 1:25 am, June 12, 2009 | 1 Comment

Forget the statistics and the care-and-share rhetoric coming from the Obama team, urging you to support “single-payer” health insurance (aka socialized medicine, aka collectivized health care) — here are a few simple, obvious reasons why you should not want it:

  1. The Incompetence of Large Organizations
    • “That government governs best which governs least.” As anyone who has served in the military, worked for a government, or been employed by a large corporation can attest, the effectiveness and efficiency of any organization decreases as the size of the organization increases and the tasks assigned to it multiply.
    • The federal government (like all levels of government) has more responsibilities on its plate than it can manage effectively and efficiently, responsibilities which already include two large healthcare bureaucracies (Medicare and Medicaid) rife with fraud, waste, mismanagement, runaway cost growth, and red tape.   Why give it more?  The federal government was never intended to be “all things to all people”, nor is it ever possible for it to fulfill such a mandate.   
  2. More Government = More Options for Corruption
    • The more roles granted to government, the more temptations for corruption are presented to bureaucrats and elected officials, ranging from open bribery to more discreet exchanges of favors among those with pull.   This will be especially true when the day inevitably arrives that the system runs out of money and “austerity measures” (rationing) must be adopted – the scarcer a commodity, the fiercer the competition to obtain it and the more tempting the quiet, unrecorded offers to those who control its distribution.
  3. Power Granted to the Government Will Inevitably Be Abused
    • Granting to government the power to give or withhold medical treatment, and closing off alternative avenues for such treatment (as private healthcare will surely be forced out of the market by the “single-payer” socialist plan),  leaves citizens who run afoul of some politician, bureaucrat, or agency with nowhere else to turn for lifesaving care. 
    • It is easy to dismiss such concerns as unfounded, but when a power is open to abuse it inevitably will be.  It’s hard to see such concerns as unfounded, in fact, when there are ample historical examples of blacklists, enemies lists, no-fly lists, politically-motivated IRS audits, personal vendettas carried out through regulatory agencies, misused police services and databases, whistleblower retaliation, rejected bids, withdrawn contracts, and other “paybacks” for those unlucky enough to earn the wrath of someone in government. 
    • If a citizen is afraid to, say, blog about their experiences with a corrupt or overreaching government agency for fear of harrassment in retribution, how afraid will they be to speak out when they know that the medicine or procedure they or a loved one need to live could be denied to them on a technicality or “inexplicably” delayed by red tape until it’s too late?
  4. Healthcare Will Be Distorted by Vote-Farming Politicians
    • Just as increased government power offers increased opportunities for corruption, it also offers new opportunities for politicians to seek votes through pandering to the related special interest groups.  As we see already with unions, identity politics groups, and statist business interests, lobbying groups will continually pressure those Congressmen with influence over the new healthcare bureaucracy for expanded coverage of the conditions or demographic blocs they represent, in exchange for turning out the votes for those Congressmen at the next election or some other superficially legal quid pro quo goodie they desire. 
    • As a result, the degree of coverage for a particular condition and which avenues of research get funding won’t be determined through objective evaluations or cost-benefit analyses under a collectivized national healthcare system, but will be a matter of which lobbies have the most sway with key Congressmen, with the sands constantly shifting with shifts in power and influence. 
    • Worse than Oprah’s latest “disease/miracle cure of the week” diverting resources away from bigger problems and more promising treatments, is the fact that the pandering instinct of politicians will lead them to support coverage of bogus “alternative therapies” – therapies long on cult-like believers but short on peer-reviewed studies demonstrating their efficacy.  Like Ma Chalmers’ soybeans in Atlas Shrugged, limited resources will be wasted chasing moonbeams and rainbows, leaving citizens promised “universal coverage” and denied alternative choices in the free market to suffer and die from readily treatable or preventable conditions.
  5. Healthcare in Government Hands Means Unstoppable Nannying
    • A government agency charged with providing healthcare to all is the perfect vehicle for do-gooders to do their flavor-of-the-week good on the rest of us…and when your healthcare is paid for by your friends and neigbors, the do-gooders will have an irresistable incentive to offer everyone to enforce their wise benevolence on everyone else.  When you are responsible for the increased healthcare costs stemming from your bad habits or dangerous hobbies, I have no reason to interfere – but when everyone is on the hook for the diseases or injuries you choose to bring upon yourself, I and everyone around you will have a direct financial incentive in incessantly nagging you to give up those habits and hobbies “for your own good”.
    • Smoking is the obvious example – smoking leads to a broad array of serious and expensive-to-treat health problems over time.  Assuming tobacco products aren’t banned outright, if I see you light up a cigarette and I am on the hook to pay for your eventual lung cancer and heart disease, why would I not dump a bucket of water over your head?  Similarly, why would I not pester you to eat a light salad with a glass of water instead of a bacon-double-cheeseburger and a Coke when we go out for lunch? Would I be out of line for nagging you to give up mountain biking or rock climbing, because you might suffer a broken limb or traumatic head injury that I would have to pay for?  What excuse could you offer to beg out of the mandatory twice-daily calisthenics your coworkers would arrange to offset the ill health effects of your working in a sedentary profession?  
    • Like the “green scolds” we have all encountered, who appear out of nowhere to tut-tut over our failure to properly separate our recyclables or shame us for some other hairsplitting transgression against the environment, everyone would be become the stereotypical mother-in-law to everyone else, empowered by their financial commitment to the collectivized healthcare system to micromanage the minutiae of each-other’s lifestyles.  Where would it ever end?

Quite apart from the unaffordable cost and usustainable tax burden that would come with the full-up collectivization of healthcare in America, and the unavoidable decline in quality and availability of care that would follow, there are numerous reasons rooted in simple human nature to shun the Obama proposal and any like it.

Overregulation and prior attempts at limited socialization of healthcare are what have led to cost growth, by inflicting compliance costs on doctors and hospitals and coverage mandates on insurers, and by incentivizing the squandering of healthcare resources through shifting the expenses to others (employers and the government).  Collectivizing healthcare through a “single-payer” scheme won’t fix anything, but it will further break plenty.  If cost growth and accessibility are the problems to be solved, the right solutions are (as always) free-market solutions: sensible deregulation of the healthcare and health insurance industries to reduce parasitic costs (paperwork and compliance) and make it possible to offer low-cost catastrophic coverage policies to those who are in good health, for example, or medical savings accounts which remove the “moral hazard” of the shifting of expenses to others and thereby encourage healthcare consumers to shop around and use their medical resources prudently.

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Category: Capitalism, Economics, Health Reform, Liberty, Obama, Small Government
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Comments

  1.   Paul Hsieh, MD
      June 12th, 2009 @ 10:18 am

    Thank you for that excellent summary!

    For more on point 5 (“Unstoppable Nannying”), please see my piece at ABC News/Christian Science Monitor:

    “Universal Healthcare and the Waistline Police”
    http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Fitness/Story?id=6614687

    If we adopt Obamacare, we’ll lose many essential freedoms that we currently take for granted.

    Paul Hsieh, MD
    Sedalia, CO

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