Hunter Baker looks at a few of the arguments against national health care. The federalism point is an important one: TennCare was a failure, RomneyCare has been a failure. Why should we expect better results in imposing a complex system on a nationwide basis?
Megan McArdle has a longer essay, which of course begs the question of why she voted for Obama, but it’s worth reading. One of the particularly chilling ideas is that national health care in the US will help mask the failings of other national health care systems around the world, because there won’t be a place left with a vibrant, relatively free health care sector to make the government-run options look bad.
4 thoughts on “Repeating Failure”
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Crank-
which of course begs the question of why she voted for Obama
A “correction”, if I may?
My understanding is that, in her recent move to DC, she failed to register in time to be an eligible voter in Nov. 2008.
Re: Megan McArdle…
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen her openly regret her voting decision over the past few months. I think she was one of those who dismissed the criticisms of Obama as being chicken little like but, now that many of those criticisms have come to fruition, she’s realized she was duped.
Jack Welch on CNBC a few weeks ago said that last fall his daughters (and their friends) dismissed all his warnings about what Obama’s election would mean. Now they are dumbfounded at how extreme and incompetent he’s been.
The stimulus was a brain-dead pork fest for special interests. Cap and trade was even worse (who believed that was even possible?!). Now he’s trying to trump that with a health care bill from hell.
It would be bad enough if he were pushing socialism this hard with some competence. But the garbage he’s puking out is truly mind-boggling. Of course, compared to his foreign policy, his domestic policy looks almost competent. Coddling dictators, screwing with democracy, insulting our allies, he’s starting to make JFK’s first year look sterling (Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, weakness in Vienna with Kruschev which encouraged missile crisis).
I do not think Megan was duped. Obama was the trendy pick, McCain was tiresome. In the end he said the right things, but I expect she always believed it was probable that he would fail to be the man he represented on the trail.
“One of the particularly chilling ideas is that national health care in the US will help mask the failings of other national health care systems around the world, because there won’t be a place left with a vibrant, relatively free health care sector to make the government-run options look bad.”
I see this playing out in the other direction. The US has been the option of last resort when socialized system fail to deliver. Canadians unable to locate a NICU bed and the like. More so when specialized treatment is involved and the local system has neither the docs nor the technology to deliver. Further, we subsidize the world’s healthcare budget via our biotech and pharma discovery system. The US shoulder’s the lion’s share of the expense as the benefits travel the globe. You would think this would not be lost on a citizen of the world.