Socialized Medicine
by Mike Thompson
 On January 19, A.F.L. - C.I.O. president John J. Sweeney was quoted in a
New York Times article demanding that Congress enact socialized
medicine in the United States: "We need a simple national health care
plan that covers everybody - the failure of Bush's complicated
Medicare prescription drug benefit demonstrates that."
In other words: The initial problems with the roll out of a more than
$700 billion entitlement program clearly demonstrate that Congress needs
to create a more colossal government-run health care program for Americans
of all ages and income levels, including Americans who
already have coverage and don't need the help.
Taking a different view of the new Medicare benefit, Robert Goldberg of
the Manhattan Institute writes: "What is really gnawing at the
liberals is the fact that Medicare Part D is truly a tipping point or a
point of no return away from government control health toward
consumer-controlled medicine." (Whether it was prudent of so-called
conservatives to back a universal voluntary Medicare prescription-drug
benefit for seniors is a separate matter worthy of its own column.)
Many experts have expressed doubts that Congress will take any
significant action on health care legislation during an election year, but
it's still useful to examine Sweeney's claim that American workers need
socialized medicine. The Columbia Encyclopedia notes that "The United
States is the only major Western country without some form of socialized
medical care." Many decent and reasonable Americans
believe society, including the federal government, has a moral duty to
expand access to health-insurance coverage for those who want and need it.
Listening to advocates of socialized medicine, it's easy to get the
misimpression that thousands of poor Americans are dying on the
streets like the lepers Mother Teresa found in Calcutta. In fact, our
government aggressively targets health coverage to needy Americans. In
2004, Congress spent more than $456 billion on the Medicaid and Medicare
programs. This amount doesn't include the billions of
federal tax dollars that went to community health centers and hospital
emergency rooms. Significant health disparities still need to be
addressed, especially among minorities, but even uninsured Americans have
faster access to providers and have a better chance of obtaining state of
the art treatments than patients who receive "free" medical care in other
countries. Americans also enjoy less expensive generic medicines than
many foreign patients.
Take Canada's health care system for example. A January 17 radio
broadcast on Marketplace, reported: "Canadians are increasingly
finding that what they have is free access to a very long waiting
list.More than 800,000 Canadians are waiting in long lists for
diagnostic tests and operations on hips and knees.Thousands are
fleeing to the United States with cash in hand."
Similarly, a 2004 study by the Fraser Institute identified
life-threatening delays among Canadians awaiting medical treatment. It
reported primary care and specialty physicians believe wait times in
Canada "are consistently and significantly longer than physicians feel is
clinically reasonable." It also found that patients awaiting radiation
oncology treatments expressed the most anxiety about delays.
The pitfalls of socialized medicine can easily be found in many
nations. The British Medical Journal, notes that that Israel's
Ministry of Health controls costs by refusing to cover new drugs that
would save lives and relieve suffering. (Only two drugs were approved by
the Ministry of Health between 1995 and 1998.) And rather than allow
physicians and patients to decide what treatments are necessary,
government bureaucrats determine what treatments are allowed, basing their
decisions largely on the costs.
Likewise, during a congressional hearing in 2004, Deputy U.S. Trade
Representative Josette Shiner noted that China had not added a new
prescription-drug to its government-approved list for more than 1.2
billion people since 1998! The dangers are even more apparent in Cuba,
where according to the Library of Congress, health care is
"free, although medicines are often unavailable and hospital equipment is
outdated."
Demagogues promise something for nothing when they advocate socialized
medicine What they really offer, as suggested by the Marketplace
broadcast, is a free spot in clogged system where arbitrary price
controls kill innovation and create life-threatening shortages of
treatments and providers. Instead of trying to impose this false
solution on American patients and our nation's economy, the President has
encouraged Congress to improve access to consumer-driven health plans,
such as the Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) created by the 2003 Medicare
law.
A helpful report by the Galen Institute summarizes the early success
of HSAs in covering previously uninsured Americans: http://www.galen.org/fileuploads/Consumerism.pdf
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