Socialized medicine, from a survivor

Washington Times ^ | July 2, 2012 | James Delingpole

[kingattax]

Welcome, America, to the British NHS. That may not be what you were promised when your president first dreamed up Obamacare. But the National Health Service is what you’re going to get all the same.

I did warn you about this, four years ago in my (depressingly) prophetic book “Welcome to Obamaland: I’ve Seen Your Future and It Doesn’t Work.” I noted, for example, that your future president had grossly underestimated the costs of socialized health care. I warned that though he said at the time that it would cost between $50 billion and $65 billion, it undoubtedly would cost 10 times that amount. Look it up if you don’t believe me. It’s on Page 37.

But since last week’s Supreme Court ruling, we are where we are, unfortunately. So let me, as a Brit who has been living the whole socialized-medicine nightmare his entire life, give you a few tips as to what you can expect (assuming Mitt Romney doesn’t get in and boot the whole thing into the dustbin of history, where it belongs).

[Biggirl]

We are closer to a second American revolution with each new day.

[lowbridge]

Bump

[Colonel Kangaroo]

Obamacare is not the NHS. It’s definitely a big step on the socialism road, but at least it’s not a fully socialistic system as in the UK. It’s not even yet as far as the fully socialized insurance Canada now has. Obamacare by itself doesn’t worry me near as much as the direction it leads to in another decade or two.

[In Maryland]

"Obamacare is not the NHS. It’s definitely a big step on the socialism road, but at least it’s not a fully socialistic system as in the UK. It’s not even yet as far as the fully socialized insurance Canada now has. Obamacare by itself doesn’t worry me near as much as the direction it leads to in another decade or two.

Decade or two? If Obama wins another term, we will have socialized medicine by the time he leaves office. Having had a taste of Canadian healthcare when I got sick as a visitor - no thanks!

[Sam Gamgee]

That is true. As a Canadian, I can tell you most Canadians see their system with rose colored glasses as well. But the fact is it is a rationed system. It has to be. It was set up when their was one person over age 65 for 14 boomers working to pay for the health care. Now provinces expend well over 50% of their budget on health care costs. And the boomers have barely started to retire. Politicians don't dare criticize the system and pretend it can all be fixed by encouraging healthy lifestyles, or tweaks here and there. America has decided on this experiment on the eve of a world demographic collapse. It blows my mind that anyone would believe Democrats when they say this will save money.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Sometimes Americans pay a heavy price for our Tunnel Vision and our general lack of understanding of what life is like in the rest of the world. I’m not addressing that to anyone in particular here, it’s a general observation about our population.

[tbw2]

By making it cheaper to push people onto the “public option” than offer insurance, Obamacare will gut the private employer - health insurance system while making private insurance through insurance companies cost prohibitive on the open market.
The result will be many people either on Medicaid or Medicare with many more shifted to the public “exchanges”. Once these systems become the vast majority, the government then takes over the private exchanges whose private plans were jacked up by government mandates, becoming the evils of Canadian healthcare.