I think I might have spent too long at the hospital today.

[emmycantbemeeko]

Everybody understands- in fact, everybody has experienced at some point- that when food is free, or perceived to be free, many people take more than they actually need. After all, why not? It's free. Think of every buffet you've ever attended, especially ones you didn't have to pay anything for

Comments

[shoutingboy]

My worry here is that we won't nationalize health care all at once. Too many people get what that would end up like. Instead, I think we're going to set up a parallel system, some government-provided "insurance of last resort"--but the way things are loaded, everyone will end up sliding into that system. (I can come up with a few scenarios that would bring that about.)

And once we're there, every bad outcome you describe--and boy howdy will we get them--will be used as an argument for more government. Long waiting lists? Denied care? Botched diagnosis? That becomes an argument for more government spending on, and regulation of, health care (and squeezing out any private options that may remain, until--as in Canada--it becomes illegal to pay for a doctor outside of the government plan).

The frustrating thing is that any time there's any bad outcome here, that's used as an argument for adopting socialized medicine. The argument is, "We got X wrong, Canada (or whomever) gets X right, if we switch we'll get X right". And even if that's valid--even if Canada really does get X right, and we can get the same result--the implicit presumption is, "Everything you like about our system will stay the same; only the thing you don't like will change, and for the better." That was the structure of that Michael Moore flick, I gather--he shows a single bad outcome in US health care, shows how that one thing is done better in a specific socialized medicine system, then goes to a different story and a different other country.

The example I keep beating my head against--people can get prescription drugs cheap from Canada, and argue that, therefore, if we switched to the Canadian system, our health care would be just as good, only our drugs would be cheaper. Yes, I hear that argument a lot. As a result, I drink a lot of beer.

[emmycantbemeeko]

I would support a federalized make-everyone-take-intro-to-macroeconomics system.