Want an idea what health care will be like under an Obama or
Rodham Clinton presidency? Just pick up any British newspaper.
Here’s one recent story from the Daily Mail:
Dorothy Simpson suffers from an irregular heartbeat that gives
here an increased chance of heart failure and stroke. Her doctor
recommended a surgery to correct the problem. Great Britain’s
National Health Service rejected the doctor’s request, saying the
61-year-old was too old. After the media began inquiring about the
decision, the NHS decided Simpson wasn’t too old after all.
Welcome to the wacky world of socialized medicine. When it comes
to health care horror stories British papers contain more frights
than the October issue of Weird Tales. A good sample of
them can be found at Reason Online’s Daily Brickbats
page.
Still it’s hard to convince some Americans that such is their
future under Dr. Obama or HillaryCare. This is understandable since
most law-abiding citizens have little direct experience with the
great maze and headache of government bureaucracy. We hire
accountants to fill in our Daedalian tax forms, and, if at all
possible, we send our children to private or religious schools.
It is likely that our only encounter with government minions
occurs at the local post office, or, once a year, at the DMV or
emissions testing center. And yet even our infrequent visits to the
post office — particularly those located in large cities — are
too much of a bureaucratic nightmare for most of us, if all of the
grumbling and cursing under people’s breath is any indication.
No one expects bureaucracies to operate smoothly and
efficiently. They are after all monopolies, with no requirement for
competition or innovation. Workers are protected by strong unions;
no matter how inept, government employees possess the kind of job
security that would make a tenured literature professor
envious.
Government jobs are often handed out as patronage to the
offspring of third-rate ward-heelers, i.e., persons who cannot find
real jobs on their own. A government job thus saves them from a
life of scrubbing bedpans at the nursing home, or folding sheets in
a hospital laundry room.
Now imagine that the same lethargic clerks down at the DMV or
the post office are responsible for choosing the doctor for your
liver transplant, that is, assuming you are deemed worthy of the
transplant. Such a scenario can only bring to mind the famous line
from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness: “[H]e cried out twice, a
cry that was no more than a breath — ‘The horror! The
horror!’”
I RECENTLY HAD my own Kurtzian — or rather Kafkaesque — brush
with a stuporous bureaucracy, no doubt a preview of what
health care will be like when handed over to the government.
Back on Valentine’s Day I was ticketed for speeding. Naturally I
hired an attorney to get the ticket reduced to a non-moving
violation. The lawyer and the city get a nice chunk of my paycheck
and I keep the points off my record. Every one is happy.
That is, I was happy until I became sucked into the strange
Twilight Zone world that is a city bureaucracy. Following my
lawyer’s advice, I sent payment to the city court. The city sent it
back, advising me that I overpaid. I sent a second payment. The
city returned this too saying “too late, a warrant has been issued
for your arrest.”
During my lunch hour I was on my way to my lawyer’s suburban
office with yet another payment (the third if you are counting)
when I was pulled over and arrested on the outstanding warrant. I
was booked and held for seven hours before I was able to get word
to the outside world of my incarceration. At length I was released
on $150 bond.
Meanwhile, a month and a half passed and the warrant remained on
the books. The city claimed it never received my bond payment. For
the past six weeks I’ve been unable to find any one in the police
department or court clerk’s office who has a clue what is going on.
I could be tossed back into the slammer any moment for a speeding
ticket I was not allowed to pay. (As I was writing this, my bond
payment arrived in my mailbox, erroneously sent to my home address
instead of the city clerk’s office…)
This is very likely the future of health care under a
Clinton-Obama presidency, only we’re not talking about a few hours
or days of freedom lost due to an inept bureaucracy — we’re
talking about the possibility of lives lost.
No doubt there are problems with the current health care system.
However, most of these difficulties can be traced to ruinous
government-intervention, the lack of free market principles, an
American Medical Association monopoly on the supply of physicians,
and frivolous lawsuits that drive up costs enormously.
Health care is wasteful and expensive, but as P.J. O’Rourke
said, “If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you
see what it costs when it’s free.”
Though far from perfect, Sen. John McCain’s $2,500 per
individual tax credit will at least steer us away from
employer-based health care, while encouraging competition. McCain’s
plan would also go a long way toward reducing health care costs,
improving quality, and increasing access to care by getting
consumers more involved, and the government less so.
If the McCain plan sinks like a lead zeppelin it will be because
most Americans have deluded themselves into believing that they are
not paying for their employer-based health insurance, when in fact,
like their income tax, it comes out of their paycheck.
I remain convinced that the most effective way to cure Americans
of a desire for socialized medicine is to give them a healthy dose
of good old-fashioned government bureaucracy. It certainly cured
me.
