National Health Care: Insanity

By Melody Gustafson

WASHINGTON – It is insane to force a country of more than 290 million people to pay for a national health care bureaucracy to provide care for less than 50 million people who lack health coverage.

An approximation of the numbers shows that a mere 16 percent of the population of the United States comprises the group for which an entire system overhaul has been proposed. While it is unfortunate that so many of us has to pay cash for health care, revamping an entire system at a higher cost to taxpayers, while requiring a sacrifice of the citizen access to quality health care, is ludicrous.

The biggest problem with the national health care proposal, besides the inflated taxes, is the inevitable loss of quality of care, and this will happen in a couple ways.

First of all, bureaucracies are headed by non-elected administrators who don’t answer to the public at the polls. These non-elected heads launch policies regularly that may be questionable to the public. When life and health are on the line, is it wise to eliminate accountability and competition in the midst of a few people whose main role in the process is to reconcile the financial existence of the country’s health care? Cost-cutting policies will effectually marginalize the standards of quality care of more people than will benefit from the overhaul.

Dick Morris, political consultant and author, issued an article May 18 that outlined some of the loss-of-quality concerns by comparing the U.S. private system with what the Canadians have done with their country.

Morris writes: “As in Canada, the best way to cut medical costs is to refrain from using the best drugs to treat cancer and other illnesses, thereby economizing at the expense of patients’ lives...death rates from cancer are 16 percent higher in Canada.” It doesn’t make sense to limit the resources of those who already have adequate health care now so a diminutive minority of Americans can benefit from a costly handout.

Morris also addresses the issue of the shortfall of medical personnel. Congress is considering saving on Medicare fees by regulating the amount doctors can charge for services. Without an incentive to enter the profession and compete with others, the amount of good doctors and nurses will decrease. One can only imagine how many times Congress would, with their backs against the wall, have to “reduce costs” at the expense of what the professionals earn. The result will be a country with an increasing population and less and less doctors to care for them.

According to Morris, “Canadian experience indicates that when government – or its satellite private insurance providers – ration health care, they cut preventative care first. In Canada, colonoscopies are so rationed that the colon cancer rate is 25 percent higher than in the United States.”

Morris does try to look at the bright side, and reason that the “other radical changes Obama is bringing about in our country can always be reversed. That which is nationalized can be privatized.” This columnist disagrees. Our country has a history of helping the disadvantaged, but as future lawmakers face the proposition of repeal in four or eight years, the propagandist mantra of the national health-care advocates will be accusation of inhumane deprivation of care for the 16 percent instead of simple “privatization.”

To read Morris's article for yourself click here: http://www.creators.com/opinion/dick-morris/the-death-of-american-health-care.html