Obamacare Ruling Will Renew Call For Socialist Single Payer
June 23, 2012 4 Comments
The Obamacare ruling is expected next week. We won’t know when it is actually going to be handed down, all the speculation on it is absurd. It’s likely that at least the individual mandate will be struck down, if not the entire law. Any ruling that all or part of Obamacare is unconstitutional will be a victory for the Tea Party and the Constitution. It will also be politically disastrous for the President. The big question though is what effect this will have on the Presidential race. There are some on the left who believe a ruling of unconstitutional will open the door for single payer socialist medicine. We must make sure this never happens.
Single payer socialist medicine would not per se be unconstitutional so long as it is based on the taxing power of the Constitution. The Congress could tax individuals or businesses and use the money to fund a massive, nationalized health care system. They already do this with Medicare, though the benefits are only for those 65 and older as opposed to all Americans. This system stands in stark contrast to Obamacare, which relies on the Commerce Clause to force Americans to buy health insurance. A single payer, socialist system would be easier for the left to get by the Constitution and let’s face it single payer is what they’ve been after all along.
Single payer though is a disaster wherever it is implemented. We forever hear the left telling us about the great health care system in Canada. In Canada you’ll find waiting lists a mile long. If you need surgery or therapeutic treatment you’ll wait an average of 18.3 weeks. Ontario leads the way, their citizens only wait 15 weeks, while Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Nova Soctia have nearly six month waiting lists. Need to see a specialist in Canada? You’ll wait two months on average. You’ll wait a month to see a cancer doctor and God help you if you’ll need to see more than one during your battle against cancer because it’s a month for each doctor. Need a CT scan in Canada? You’ll wait nearly 5 weeks. Need a MRI? You’ll wait over 10 weeks.
Meanwhile in Great Britain they’re knocking off the elderly at the rate of 130,000 per year. They attempt to make excuses for this number (it isn’t denied) but we all know they’re killing these people because they’re a cost burden. Life becomes cheap when taxpayers are on the hook and there’s a deficit. Politicians don’t have to worry about dead people voting in the next election, they do have to worry about angry taxpayers who don’t like deficits.
The reason why socialist medicine is such a mess is because it functions outside of the market. It’s very easy to go see a GP in a socialist country because they are the lowest common denominator. All voters need to see a GP every year so the government props these doctors up and makes them easily accessible. Fewer voters need to see specialists or need special treatment so it pays at the ballot box to fund these people at lower levels than the market would otherwise demand. We have the opposite situation here in the US, we have specialists galore because Americans demand them. It’s why we have the best healthcare in the world and Canada and Great Britain do not.
In the next few weeks the far left will call for socialist single payer healthcare. Odds are the American public isn’t going to be much interested in another massive left-wing healthcare program. But we must be prepared to combat socialist healthcare when they call for it. The numbers from Canada and Britain are chilling. The lack of competition breeds waste. The political solutions to health problems is costly for sick people and the elderly. Do the American people, particularly the 85% with health insurance, really want four month waiting lists for treatment? Do we really want to wait a month or two for basic diagnostic tests that we can get tomorrow or the next day now? Do we really want a system that has incentive to knock off the elderly when they become “too costly”? That’s what socialist single payer will give us. God help us if Obama should ever manage to pass it.
