Mark Steyn on universal health care:
I don’t have much to add to Jonah’s and Iain’s posts, but hey, that’s never stopped me before. So let me just say that I think socialized health care is the single biggest factor in transforming the relationship of the individual to the state. In fact, once it’s introduced it becomes very hard to have genuinely conservative government – certainly, not genuinely small government. I think I say in my book that in Continental cabinets (and in Canada) the Defense ministry is somewhere you pass through en route to a really important portfolio like Health. Election campaigns become devoted to competing pledges about “fixing†health care, even though by definition it never can be.
In a public health care system, the doctors, nurses, janitors and administrators all need to be paid every Friday so the only point at which costs can be controlled is through the patient, by restricting access. If you go to an American doctor with a monstrous lump on your shoulder, it’s in his economic interest to find out what it is and get it whipped off as soon as possible. If you go to a British or Canadian doctor, it’s in the system’s economic interest to postpone it as long as possible. And because the public will only sit around on waiting lists for two or three years, eventually in order to control costs you have to claw it out of other budgets – like Defense. Socialized health care is the biggest cause not just of the infantilization of the citizenry but of the state.
Now, I am a conservative and I am a big opponent of Big Government, but lets not act as if universal health care is the root of all of Europe’s problems. Our health care system needs to be improved, that is for sure, but it is not as bad as Jonah thinks it is. In the end, we do not have citizens who do not receive treatment because they do not have enough money, which I consider to be a good thing.
Please click here to read more.
PAST CONTRIBUTOR.