Universal Health Care is Not Free! Nor Universal.
No sooner had I mentioned universal health care, which is a grossly misleading term, than I saw that Barack Obama is calling for it. We can expect much the same from many politicians in the near future because people want it even though they don’t really understand what it will cost them.
Obama was previewing what is shaping up to be a theme of the 2008 Democratic primary. His chief rivals, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Edwards, also are strong proponents of universal health care and have promised to offer their plans.
In today’s Seattle-PI, Bill Virgin tells a cautionary tale about “universal” health care:
It didn’t get a lot of attention south of the border, but up in Vancouver, B.C., last month, there was an incident that, to judge from the reaction of officialdom, threatened to rip apart the entire Canadian health care system.
That threat: the opening of a doc-in-the-box at which people could pay to have a cut stitched up or a broken arm set.
Americans might be perplexed at the consternation over what is a fairly standard fixture on the health care landscape in this country. They might also wonder why the Canadians would object to some sort of relief for overcrowded emergency rooms, or why anyone would care if someone wanted to shell out their own money to treat relatively minor ailments.
But care and object they did, in language that suggested what the clinic was proposing was organ harvesting on the unwilling. “They will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” warned the B.C. premier.
The laws in this case, according to the Vancouver Sun, are the Canada Health Act and the B.C. Medical Services Act, which make it “illegal for any doctor within the medicare system to extra-bill for procedures that are supposed to be universally available and free.” In the end, the clinic in question agreed to bill the government for services rather than the patients.
If “universal” health care is “free” then why is the government sent a bill? Because single-payer health care is not free. The cost is passed on to the taxpayers, including the government’s administrative costs.
Since there is not an unlimited amount of money to pay for all procedures, the health care must be rationed. That means that some people get what they want when they need it but others don’t based on which services the politicians have decided to pay for. So it’s not “universal” either.
The only thing universal about the Canadian system is that everybody is forced to use it and pay for it even when they can’t get the care they want or need. The fact that people can’t get the care they need is the reason why “doc-in-the-box” operations pop up, only to be shut down by the government which does not want people to get the health care they want and are willing to pay for.
Virgin points out that there are alternatives.
Of course, government directed universal coverage and single-payer aren’t the only options. There’s a universe of ideas being discussed and even tried — consumer-directed health care, health savings accounts, cash-only medical services, even increased use of lower-cost doc-in-a-box-style clinics — to lower the cost and expand the reach of health care, while keeping the features Americans like.
For the moment, though, the siren song of single payer is the prevailing tune. Those humming along should not be so distracted that they fail to understand what they might not be getting but may very well be giving up.
People who believe in universal health care are quite religious about it. Like those who believe in a personal God in spite of evidence to the contrary, any evidence that universal health care is neither free nor universal is quickly dismissed in favor of the fairy tale that it is both.
UPDATE: The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric did a segment on Massachusetts’ attempt to provide universal health care. I wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement.
Martir Burgos was told her premium would be just $40 a month. She can’t afford even that. Bill Walczak, CEO of a community health clinic, says she’s not alone.
“They’re already taking money that they don’t have and trying to spend it on things that they desperately need, like food,” Walczak says.
All uninsured residents are required to enroll by July or face tax penalties.
Perhaps the biggest hurdle is changing the culture so that insurance is seen not as a luxury, but as a necessity.
“How do you reach that 24-year-old guy who thinks nothing’s going to happen to him and he’d rather buy two six-packs of beer than health insurance,” says Grace Moreno.
Is turning people into slaves of a state-mandated healthcare machine good for their health?
Didn’t the politicians say that healthcare was a “right” and that it should be free?
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