“Medicare for everyone,” is a slogan Jimmy Dore has popularized. I like Jimmy, but I believe his solution won’t work. Like many statist fixes to social problems it is based on magical thinking and logical confusion.
Existing Medicare is all but bankrupt and provides very poor service. The system was created when we had four times as many workers paying in as claimants drawing out. Funding the system we have is now demographically impossible. Additionally, because of the explosion in healthcare inflation combined with government and the Fed inflating away the value of wages on behalf of the top investor class, bang for the buck keeps getting worse.
If the problem is that people can’t afford healthcare, the solution is not bigger government boondoggles and more transfer payments marketed as “insurance.” Who pays? How can we trust this government to manage it properly?
The government is, if not the whole problem, at least a big part of it. This reeling sailor will never drink himself sober.
Of course, many will say, why not copy the brilliant solution they have in Canada and Britain and have 100% government funded care? To be brief: 1. Their product sucks; 2. US taxpayers can’t afford it on top of things like demographic shift and the cost of the military industrial complex; 3. Americans pay the most and get the least for it because they bear most of the cost of development and others pay less for the same drugs, equipment, etc. because the government doesn’t enforce trade and antitrust law; 4. The issue is cost of care, not cost of insurance, which is a license to steal.
The government should first address corruption, in which it is a key participant, get out of the way of creative solutions, and prosecute crimes against care recipients, premium payors and the public at large.
Addressing the problem more directly means attacking the sources of cost and factors destroying the value of wages, many if not all of which are also epic government failures, including The Department of The Treasury and The Federal Reserve’s long running currency printing and debt explosion Ponzi.
One thing the government could do would be to enforce laws already on the books against predatory price fixing and collusion, as well as anti-competitive cartelization of the industry. They could do more to lower costs in a year by using RICO to put hospital administrators, pharma executives and insurance company bosses in jail.
A related benefit would be to put the movers and shakers behind the Ronamania disaster away for a long time, and get them out of the business.
ATwork space 