Which do you prefer: waiting two months for a free heart bypass or paying for one in time to save your life? The former is the Democratic Party’s solution to our country’s health insurance and prescription drug problem. Indeed, the United States is the only developed nation that does not have socialized medicine. So if everyone else is on board, should the US follow? To answer this question we must look at countries where government healthcare already exists and also the role of government in our lives.
It is disingenuous to cast a broad net over the entire industrial world when it comes to healthcare; some nations (France and Sweden) do it better than others (England and Canada). However, there are enough similarities to draw some conclusions.
When it comes to prescription drugs, the US is by far the leader in research and development. Yes, the drugs are expensive, but they are also expensive to make. Without a free market where drug companies can charge market value, important drugs for myriad diseases (cancer, heart disease, various vaccines) would never be produced.
In addition, the United States has better medical equipment and doctors than countries with socialized medicine. Medical equipment is also more ubiquitous, providing patients with the care they need without having to travel. Indeed, there are more MRI machines in Philadelphia than in all of Canada.
Also, wait times for medical procedures are drastically shorter in the US. You need not look hard to find many instances of patients who had to wait incredible amounts of time for essential surgery in countries with socialized medicine.
According to the 2006 United Kingdom National Health Services Hospital Episode Statistics, 63 percent of patients who received hip surgery were waitlisted. Once waitlisted, the mean time a patient had to wait was 158 days, slightly over five months. When it came to heart surgery, 85 percent of patients receiving a coronary artery bypass were waitlisted. Their average waiting time was 67 days, over two months.
Although there is much talk of Americans buying Canadian prescription drugs, Canadians frequently cross the border for surgery to avoid the tremendous waiting lists.
However, countries with national healthcare have a distinct advantage when it comes to patient care – they treat everyone, regardless of ability to pay. The failure of the US to address this problem is a shame. But does that important point ipso facto make socialized medicine the better system? Let’s look at it from a different angle.
There is a far more insidious effect of socialized medicine. Small government is not only desirable because we as people should never trust the government to run our lives, but also because it provides the societal and cultural bulwark for a free society.
A nation that no longer needs to worry about its own healthcare can easily slide into a malaise where the government provides every essential service. We become ever more dependent and submissive until one day we forget what being independent and free truly means.
There is an important difference between freedom from oppression and freedom from harm. The former is the most vital function of government and necessary for a free society, while the latter is an emotional impulse that is antithetical to freedom.
Even if you do not buy into that argument, everyone can empirically judge the quality of government services. It is quite obvious that government bureaucracies are slow and inefficient and are always worse than their private sector counterparts.
If you honestly want the likes of the INS, the IRS, and FEMA being responsible for your healthcare, then you are willing to put a little more trust in the government than I am. And do not say we should create an effective government institution to manage healthcare because it is an oxymoron: effective government does not exist.
But what about America’s millions of uninsured poor, must they suffer while upper and middle class Americans enjoy outstanding health services? No, they need not. The disadvantages of American healthcare can be corrected within our current system to mirror the benefits of socialized healthcare without the drawbacks. The answer is not more government, but less.
President Bush recently proposed reducing payroll taxes, which is the only tax low wage earners pay. With this extra money, people can afford to purchase medical insurance. So not only will this program allow people to keep more of their own money and reduce government waste, it will allow the uninsured to have access to the same world class health care as the rest of the nation.
This reform will allow the US to retain its dominance in technology and research, while still co-opting the only redeemable tenet of socialized medicine – healthcare irrespective of income.