With every new revelation about what is part of the proposed government health care program it becomes more obvious that government’s involvement in health care is a bad idea.
Set aside your rooting interest for a moment – it doesn’t matter if you are a democrat, republican or independent – the government cannot, and does not, do a better job than the private sector of providing goods and services. The US Postal Service is a great example of this.
The “Post Office” was a monopoly for generations – and had a huge head start over the private sector – yet cannot efficiently and effectively deliver packages and mail. If Federal Express and other private entities weren’t prevented by law from delivering mail, the government would have been out of the mail game long ago.
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are a mess. If you’ve ever had to deal with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) you can’t be too thrilled with the prospects of having a government worker hold sway over your health care program. The IRS and state tax collection systems are a mess.
We all know what a debacle the feds made of the mortgage business and have heard the stories of waste, mismanagement and inefficiency in federal agencies in Washington, D.C. down to local municipalities. Many states have let private enterprise take over formerly state run endeavors, such as the division of motor vehicles, precisely because the state had made a mess of things.
If you doubt this inherent inefficiency, how else do you explain the current administration’s promise – as part of their push to pass health care reform – to get rid of billions of dollars in fraud and waste from the current Medicare and Medicaid systems? Why can’t the feds fix these problems independent of passage of new health care legislation?
The answer is, “They can’t.”
There’s word that the federal government will put pressure on individuals to lose weight, stop smoking and adopt other purported healthy habits. If we head down this slippery slope we will to lose other freedoms. The government will no doubt rely on the discredited philosophy that fat and weight are culprits to be dealt with.
In turn people will pursue unhealthy options in order to lose weight. What possible way could the government reliably enforce such regulations? The answer is, “They can’t.” The “science” driving the “fat-is-evil” movement is as unproven and reliable as the “science” that has given us global warming. This is nothing upon which to base, and make, policy. And there’s no reason to subject hundreds of millions of Americans to a new iteration of a failed experiment, state run health care.
Oh, and if the government really thinks smoking is killing people they should ban tobacco, not just attach exorbitant taxes to it. Government inefficiency and wastefulness doesn’t discriminate and people of all political persuasions get less– and pay more – when government is involved.
