The Democrats in Congress are cock-sure they can understand, reform, and regulate the entire, mixed private-public, US health care system.
The Federal Government is already the major player, with Medicare, Medicaid, VA, military, Chip, SSI, workers compensation, and, who really knows, other health regulation and subsidy programs. Now the Democrats want to include all medical care within their purview. How can anyone encompass in the entire amalgam? The answer is, no one can. But the Democrats and the Left believe that more commissions and (to use that ugly word Obama loves) czars, acting with arbitrary authority to set regulations, will be able to do so.
To the current health care system, the Democrats now wish to add new entitlements through legislation that runs, depending upon which committee bill is being discussed, between 1500 and 1900 pages of law. If this monstrosity gets enacted, the law will be transformed by Congressional offices into a set of regulations that will run in print thousands of pages more. Once in operation, administrative decisions based on the regulations will be challenged, leading to court decisions, which will add thousands of printed cases relevant to the administration of the regulations, to the rights of citizens in the health care system, and to the arbitrary authority of the governmental managers. An entire specialized practice of the law will have to spring up to provide counsel to the administrators, the consumers, and others involved in health care.
Herbert Spencer once derided the notion that an administrative state could run, by the command structure of administration, a complicated economy by asking his readers to imagine running the economy of London. Imagine putting into printed regulations every single decision and movement of every resident, regarding every economic and social act and transaction, every price, every sale, every purchase. It is unimaginable. Only free markets can organize such a vast, complex economy. Yet it is precisely this kind of totalitarian command administration of health care that the Democratic Party wishes to impose on America.
Where do the Democrats get their confidence that they can successfully frame legislative law, administrative regulations, and administrative law to organize the minutia of disease research, pharmaceutical production and distribution, medical practice, mental health practice, dental practice, patient treatment, well-health maintenance, administration of social, natural, and workplace environments for safety and health, the social decisions related to chronic diseases, degenerative diseases, and end-of-life care, and set fees and compensations for this vast economy?
Do the Democrats get their confidence from a study of history? No. Do they get their confidence from the advice and consent of economists? No. Do they get their confidence from personal experience in practicing medicine or administrating medical care? No. Do they get their confidence from any empirical scientific study of the health care system? No.
Then from where do they obtain their confidence? From two sources. First, from Marxist, socialist ideology. Obama is a true believer. The Left are true believers. Most liberals are true believers in some vague version of it. That source is simple foolishness. Second, from the legal fact that they have the power to pass such laws. That source is brute arrogance.
The Democrats' project shall surely fail. Will inevitably fail. The quality of everybody's health care will fall. Why? Because it bears no relationship to reality of the complexity of health care. And because it bears no relationship to the limited capability of the human mind intellectually to organize such complexity.
What shall the Democrats say then, when the results of their grand scheme don't meet their predictions? What shall they say when whole sectors of health care collapse? Here the scary part gets scarier. They will say, they must simplify reality so that it can fit into their scheme. How to simplify the reality of medical care? End the private-public mix. Put all health and medical care of any and all kinds into a single administrative system. Make all doctors and health care workers employees of the government. Nationalize all hospitals, hospices, nursing homes, neighborhood clinics. Give everyone exactly the same care, making all care "free" by ending all personal and employer payment, and having the federal government pay for all care. Then get the money to pay for all this health care by confiscating, say, 30% of everyone's gross income.
Briefly put, the only answer the Democrats will have to the question of how to make reality fit our limited, human intelligence and capabilities is a totalitarian communism of health care. That won't work either; it didn't work in any communist society, not the Soviet Union, not Communist China, not in Cuba (want to wait three years for your "free" prescription glasses?). But by the time that failure is clear to all, all the current politicians will be dead. They won't care then. And they don't care now.
We shall all suffer from their foolishness and arrogance. We will lose quality health care. We will lose our freedom.
Recent Comments