Sen. Bernie Sanders arguing for government-run health care in the Huffington Post:
Our current private health insurance system is the most costly, wasteful, complicated and bureaucratic in the world.
Right, Bernie. Because putting the government in charge of the whole thing will reduce costs, get rid of waste and eliminate bureaucratic red tape.
His headline is, “Health Care Is a Right, Not a Privilege.” Sigh. For something to be a right, it means it must be given to you regardless of whether or not you pay for it. Unfortunately for positive rights like these (right to health care, right to housing, right to food), someone has to provide them. Which means someone must be forced to build the home, grow the food etc… without payment.
Okay doctors, architects, and farmers. Your work is now my right. Feed me, house me and care for me. I don’t have to pay for it. I was born with the right to your labor.
4 responses so far ↓
Jack Fears that American Democracy is Eating Itself « The Populist Press Weblog // June 12, 2009 at 10:11 am |
[...] a comment » It is posts like this one that have me worried about the state of American democracy. Over thirty years of anti-government [...]
Kevin Delaney // June 14, 2009 at 3:03 am |
It seems to me that libertarians got so caught up in the question of whether the insurance pools should be publicly or privately owned that they missed the real issue.
The real issue was if health care should be funded on an individual or on collective level.
Pooled resources have an entirely different logical structure than individually owned resources. (See actuarial v. life cycle analysis)
In our current employer based insurance system, health care decisions are made according to the dynamics of the pool, rather than according to the needs of the individual.
As the needs of the individual will always be at odds with the collective (whether publicly or privately owned), private health insurance pools will always be a source of contention.
The debate about whether or not the collective should be privately or publicly owned is absurd.
The debate should have been about funding health care on an individual or collective level. We were cajoled into collective funding by a tax system which favored employer based insurance to funding health care through savings and loans.
All of our discontentment with the status quo is the result of health care being funded at a collective level.
The Liberty Papers »Blog Archive » Obamacare roundup // June 16, 2009 at 2:36 am |
[...] Chris Moody: “Okay doctors, architects, and farmers. Your work is now my right. Feed me, house me and care for me. I don’t have to pay for it. I was born with the right to your labor.” [...]
Andrew // June 16, 2009 at 8:27 am |
Americans have a lot of misconception when it comes to a public health care system. Canada has enjoyed public health care for around 40 years now, being adopted by provinces on their own accord with a 50% cost share agreement with our federal government.
This is how access to Health Care in Canada works: each province has their own insurance program setup. Anyone who visits a doctor, public clinic, hospital, etc, without a health insurance card will be given a bill payable to whomever administered the service. If the person has a health care card they just simply provide the card and walk away without a bill in hand.
Doctors run their own practices and are encouraged to incorporate their businesses for tax and liability reasons. Each province sets a payment rate for a visit to the doctor, which is around $55 per-visit in my province. Hospital staff are paid by the hospital itself with a government subsidy. Hospitals have a privately elected board of directors to keep the government’s nose out of hospital policy and direction. Hospital fund raisers are often held in communities to purchase extra equipment.
Services like vision, dental, and prescription drug coverage are different in each province. My province, for example, covers vision and dental for children under 16 and elders over 65. Most workplaces help fill the vision and dental gap with a private insurance option.
This thing we call medicare does not fund itself. Canadians do have sales tax added to almost everything we purchase and our income taxation is rather high. I paid around $4,000 in taxes last year on a $28,000 income. Not bad, considering the services I received last year. I saved money.