Socialized Medicine is Not the Answer

Socialized medicine is not all its cracked up to be. If you talk to some people from Canada they will tell you that they do have access to medical care but the quality medical care is lower than that of the US. Any form of socialism is doomed to lower quality whether it be "free" medicine, housing, or an inefficient public education system.

People who want something for nothing will be the first to want socialized medicine. However, there is no such thing as a free lunch. People who want something for nothing will ultimately end up with nothing. Centralized planning of health services is by its nature corrupt and inefficient. Market forces should determine the health care process and patients should bear the costs and responsibilities of choosing the proper healthcare provider, not a government bureaucrat.

Human nature must be taken into consideration when discussing these policies. If people are offered "free" health care they may be less likely to take care of themselves. This means alcoholics will continue their alcoholism, obese people will continue their overeating, and smokers will continue their smoking. However when people know that they bear the costs alone for their health conditions they're more likely to take better care of themselves.

Socialized medicine will never take off in the United States because America is not a socialist country. Furthermore, most hard-working law-abiding citizens do not want to have to bear the costs for those who do not work hard and who do not take care of their physical health. Socialized medicine is not the right answer to improving health care services in modern industrialized economies.

One thing to consider if you institute free health care is the ramifications it will have for the illegal immigration problem in the US. The more freebies you give out the more people will swell a long the borders. Economist Milton Friedman pointed this out many times. If the US abandoned its welfare statist policies there be an extraordinary reduction in the amount of people coming here illegally. Adding free health care to the mix would only exacerbate the problem.

In the end people said we want to pay less taxes. People will vote with their wallets. Any politician who tries to jack up the taxes will pay dearly in the voting booths. This is why most politicians do not espouse socialist healthcare plans. This is why it is unlikely that such plans would receive support in the future.