I suppose that's what I'll have to be since the Democrats have decided to take over the health care system through the budget reconciliation process. This latest power grab by Washington will receive a whopping 35 hours of debate. The next time you hear the term "the world's greatest deliberative body" from your Senator, you have my permission to vomit, preferably on your Senator.
Let's be perfectly clear here, "universal health care" isn't about health care, and it surely won't be universal. You doubt me? We now have a health care system said to under-serve roughly 40 million people. The actual number is debatable, but let's take it as a given. Plans for universal health care will inevitably result in a reduction of supply, and fewer people actually served.
Consider a little basic economics: prices rise when there is an under-supply of a particular good or service. Price serves as the rationing mechanism to ensure that the supply is distributed as efficiently as possible among the consumers of the product. At the same time, of course, the prevailing price acts as an incentive to producers, higher prices encourage more production, lower prices are a disincentive. Still with me?
Now, what happens when the .gov gets involved? As we see with current federal medical programs, reimbursements are capped at a fraction of the cost of production. This has the expected result, and fewer patients are able to obtain the service for the capped price. As is also predictable, this results in a sizable market for "supplemental" insurance to fill the gap, a market soon to be legislated out of existence. The result, again, will be a shortage of supply, but with capped prices, there will be no market incentive to producers and the supply will not rise to meet demand and fewer patients will be served.
What about the other mechanism for "cost control" being discussed, restricting the availability of "high cost" or "experimental" procedures? This has the perverse effect of restricting demand by killing off the patients, and while an effective mechanism for cost control from the government's standpoint, is certainly not in the best interests of the sick. Again though, the result is fewer patients being served.
Conspicuously absent from any current discussion of "universal health care" is increasing the supply, which actually would reduce patient costs. Why? Health care providers like the high prices they can now command, and lobby effectively to restrict supply. In short, they don't want, and work to prevent, competition.
One other point to consider; upper middle class small businesspeople, like doctors and dentists, tend to fall into the economic brackets the government wants to tax more. Again, reducing the incentive to produce.
So, if the goal of universal health care is to actually provide health care to the 40 million not being served now, why would any sane people (and politicians
are sane people, mostly) support a program that will inevitably result in increasing the under-served population? That answer's actually pretty easy: votes. By creating a universal entitlement to health care, a vast new constituency, dependent on the government for a basic need is created. A significant side benefit will be the creation of a huge new bureaucracy staffed with people who will reliably vote to preserve their jobs.
Bottom line: the only people who win with "universal health care" are politicians and bureaucrats, and THAT is why it will happen.