Is Obama too conservative? Paying for Health Care.
September 11th 2009 20:32
Paying for Health Care Reform
We are often told that the problem in the health care reform debate is that apples to apples comparisons are not being made. Or that someone is not telling the truth.
The problem is that politicians on both sides of the debate. Politicians, by definition, never tell the truth. You can verify this for yourself by looking at the rhetoric of anyone running for office. Does the individual say that you can have everything you want but pay for none of it? Only a small child could believe that. Eventually you will pay if not in higher taxes then in higher prices. When government raises taxes and fees on business, they almost always pass the increase on to you. This is in the nature of a stealth tax. You’d scream like a stuck pig if feds came in through the front door taking your money.
Government does not create value. If you study governments in the past who have just printed paper money like it was going out of style, Zimbabwe and the Wiemar Republic for instance, you will see that value of that printed paper quickly went to zero. Value is created by private businesses and individuals. Government can dilute that value, but government can not increase that value. The reason is that government does not produce anything.
By the way, why doesn’t the government print a trillion dollars and give it to every man, woman an child in the United States? If you want to argue that the government can create and should create and distribute wealth, why not do that? Well, after everyone has a trillion dollars, how much would a loaf of bread cost? Probably a million dollars. Maybe more. Again, study the Germany after World War I or Zimbabwe circa 2008 to find out why this is so. Government can dilute wealth but not create it.
So let’s get to that apples to apples comparison on the subject of health care. In particular we want to test the proposition that government has the ability to control the rising costs of health care. Fortunately we have two prime examples of government controlled health care: Medicaid and Medicare. Surely, since we are told that government can take over and run health care, 1/6 of the economy, the government record on controlling costs in Medicaid and Medicare must be sterling and spotless. After all, would you hire a brain surgeon who killed all his previous patients?
In 1966 Medicare cost $3billion. The House Ways and Means committee projected that that the cost in 1990 would be $9 billion. The actual cost was $67 billion.
Different researchers have examined different aspect of Medicare costs but all of them peg the growth in to be at least 7 times higher than projected. Remember that the next time someone in government tells you how much Universal health care will cost in 10 years.
The government has over $50 trillion in unfunded liabilities before Universal Health Care comes in. Since we don’t know where all that money is coming from, where will money for health care on top of this come from?
To be entirely fair to government, health care is not the only place they have mismanaged costs, consider the list below. It was the US federal government lack of oversight and mismanagement of the first item in the list that bankrupted almost all the world economies.
1. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
2. Amtrak
3. Senate Restaurant
4. Medicare and Medicaid cost containment and control
5. Paying for social security over the next 50 years
6. Presenting a balanced budget every year
7. Reducing the Deficit to zero
8. Reducing the National Debt to zero.
9. The post office
There are no economic reasons to give the government more control over health care given that it has financially botched everything it has touched. Government health care is a political move not an economic one.
Projected vs Actual Medicare Costs
Public Option
ObamaCare
Obama is too conservative?
Giving the government more money to spend always fixes the problem. Doesn’t it?
Government Control
Government Control over your behavior
Health Care Reform
Taking Crazy Pills
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