The Conservative Case for Universal Healthcare

The American Conservative ^ | July 25, 2017 | Chase Madar

[usconservative]

And that’s a good thing, because socializing healthcare is the only demonstrably effective way to control costs and cover everyone. It results in a healthier country and it saves a ton of money.

Don't have to read any further. Just look north to Canada to see how they excessively tax alcohol as one example to "control costs, cover everyone" and "save a ton of money."

Try buying a case of beer in Canada and see how much one pays as compared to here in America.

All those taxes on beer? That's to pay for their healthcare.

All the taxes on income? To pay for their healthcare.

And that list goes on, and on, and on!

Anyone who thinks socialized medicine is effective needs to simply look across the pond at a 11 month old child that was DENIED life-saving treatment early on and was condemned to death in the UK by the NHS.

Charlie Gard, The Face of Socialized Medicine.

[wastoute]

Exactly. If you think healthcare is expensive now, just wait until it’s “free”.

[Interesting Times]

Chase Madar is an attorney in New York and the author of The Passion of Bradley Manning: The Story Behind the Wikileaks Whistleblower.

This tells you everything you need to know.

[wastoute]

Anybody who believes you can meet an unlimited demand with a limited supply needs to go back to Econ 101.

[nclaurel]

Think that U.K. Healthcare includes dental? Just looking at the teeth of even the royals makes that scary.

[Buckeye McFrog]

To their credit most Canadians I have met have been honest enough to admit that their health care is not “free”. They pay enormous taxes for it.

[usconservative]

Oh I know most Canadian’s are honest about it, I know a few. It’s the dumbass liberal Americans who think it’s “free” north of the border ..... idiots.

[mjp]

American conservatives will soon be embracing single-payer healthcare, or some other form of socialized healthcare.

conservatives will not want to give the gooberment control of our lives which it will have if it controls health care

[dforest]

Yes, the NWO wants Universal healthcare in every country so they can control all people.

We saw how they handled the Charlie Gard case.

He gets death.

Many in the GOP are world government types. I am sure they have been promised a lot of cash to make it happen.

They no longer care about the people as you can see.

[SoCal Pubbie]

Of course. I was simply stating that if there is no direct monetary impact on individuals for medical treatments, then use of the healthcare system will go way up. The only ways to control costs will be to remove profit (and high salaries) from both medical technology companies and individual doctors, and withholding care. The former will mean fewer new drugs and treatments with less competent doctors, and the latter will mean more patients will die awaiting treatment.

[Personal Responsibility]

“...American conservatives will soon be embracing single-payer healthcare...”
“...But within five years, plenty of Republicans will be loudly supporting or quietly assenting to universal Medicare.”

Using “Conservatives” and “Republicans” interchangeably is wrong. Most Republicans are not conservative.

[kingu]

It is estimated that health care will actually end up being 20% of the GDP next year.

So here's the unasked question; if some magic bullet legislation goes through and we shrink healthcare from 20% of the GDP to just 10%, and the sub-prime mortgage collapse only slashed the GDP by 4%, what will the economy look like?

And a second question: Once healthcare is slashed nearly 50%, will every other country in the world's healthcare costs rise to fill the void in all that cash we pumped into the system which pays for most medicine development?

And the last question: Aside from the initial reductions in cost, every single national health care program has gotten progressively more expensive. It is just easier for countries which we protect to dedicate more and more of their national budget to cover - as we do not have that cushion, how do you keep national healthcare going more than a decade?

[Leep]

Well, Hitler was a right-winger according to lefties?

[arthurus]

Much more effective and far cheaper to accomplish all those dreamy things is completely untethering Medicine and Insurance from the Federal Government. When those become competitive businesses, access and medical progress will increase to levels only claimed and unattainable with SP. With SP costs are "contained" by denying people medical care for rational government reasons and the quality must decline as it is already declining as the best and the brightest are less and less inclined to go into medicine and the best in the field are retiring from the field or going offshore. It is what happened in England and in Canada and has begun here.

With SP the common folk have an equal chance to be turned down by a bureaucrat for treatment if we are deemed to be non productive, and the bias toward favored minorities will disappear, too. When the USA goes to SP R&D will end for the most part as the funds will be in competition with Defense and Welfare and Roads and Graft & Corruption and the development of new drugs will end, including the development of new antibiotics to replace the declining extant drugs. It will not be quick and the percentages of people succumbing to their maladies will gradually increase as the antibiotics become less and less effective.

America is the sole reason there is medical R&D anywhere in the world. America still grants patents to new drugs and allows the inventors to recoup their investment with patent prices. No other country does that and they all clone new inventions for their own societies or force the inventors to sell at generic prices. Even the ruling class will not notice the loss until the capability for R&D is gone and not easily recoverable, probably not recoverable at all because the Ruling Class can only conceive of rebuilding it with strict management and control.

SP will complete the transition to stagnant and declining Socialism. Politics will be all about this minority or that minority being promised tweaks and favors to right a perceived wrong in the system or get special consideration for this group and that one. The oligarchs will continue to get the very best of medicine but that will also be in continual decline which they won't even notice because the level of medicine will be so much higher for them than for the "masses." Perception is relative, even for them.

[alloysteel]

Outcomes of “single payer” adoption -

1. All innovation in advancements in treatment of conditions both common and uncommon comes to a screeching halt.

2. “Death panels” which have final authority to choose to suspend or reduce care to palliative treatment only, when the continued life of the patient must show some “economic benefit” measured in “Quality of Life in Remaining Years”, a measurement that may be highly subjective.

3. Delays in the treatment of conditions, leading to deterioration of the condition over time, that change what would have been an easily treated ailment into a life-threatening crisis or even inducing early death.

4. Rules which make it a punishable offense to seek treatment from another unauthorized source, and for which any future participation in any aspect of the single-player scheme is expressly forbidden.

And these are just the more egregious of the bad outcomes of adoption of this system. Longer range, the quality of the medical professionals is sure to decline, as fewer and fewer applicants see much of a future in becoming a medical professional, as the returns on the time invested diminish to the vanishing point, in terms of a sense of dedication, and emotional reward for efforts expended, let alone the economic aspects of a much reduced level of remuneration.

[onedoug]

Tell everyone, that American RINOs will soon be ruining healthcare for the nation.

[FlingWingFlyer]

I don’t think Chase’s elevator goes all the way to the top. He even thinks he’s a “conservative”. A “conservative” what, I don’t know.

[momincombatboots]

He said it saves money and lives.. after that, I stopped reading because Charlie Gard wasn’t the exception, he was the rule.

[Terry Mross]

If it takes as long to see a doctor as long as it takes to read this rambling, boring article, we won’t need to see one we’ll be terminal.

[Jim Noble]

After last night, is this the wave of the future?

Well, I've been posting something quite similar to this for more than a year.

Let me condense and translate into ConSpeak™.

The taxpayers, through their representatives, have both the right and the obligation to direct how their hard-earned dollars are to be spent. Medicare, by promising to pay without limit for all "reasonably necessary" things erected a giant industry to discover and to deliver those things, none of which were perceived as necessities in 1965, all of which are in 2017.

Since at least 1992, and probably since 1986, this enterprise has been financed through debt, money printing, and a corrupt engagement with the insurance industry. The taxpayers want a return to regular order, where the government has a budget such that it is possible to know, and to predict, what things will cost.

But, with taxpayer payment without limit for new and useful inventions, by God, they keep coming. And the recipients of these things, since they have by now monstrous co-pays and other financial obligations arising out of the corrupt government engagement with the insurance industry, believe they are "paying for it", when, in reality, the taxpayer is (one way or another) on the hook for at least 90% of the river of cash that sustains the system.

It has to stop. It will stop with collapse (most likely) or with some form of "national health care" which will at last have a fixed cost per year.

If we are lucky, there will be a robust private option. If we are unlucky, we will have a Soviet system where private care only exists for the nomenklatura.

Either way, a crisis is right around the corner. The choices are: keep borrowing and printing until everything collapses OR have a national system with a fixed budget, hopefully with more for those who want it and can pay for it.