Tag: socialized medicine

Subsidize demand. Restrict supply.

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If you want something for “free,” make sure the government isn’t the payor. It’s a classic moral hazard.

In the case of any shortfall of the “free” good or service, the government will appeal to the people they saddled with the costs. AKA taxpayers. It’s the taxpayers fault for not paying enough. Or, it’s the taxpayers who are being hurt (by our policies) and must have relief!

Raising taxes is one solution. Reducing services is another. Doing both is optimal for your government. And when the drain on the Treasury can be reduced by eliminating customers… well health care isn’t where you want that to happen.

Those of you who think corporations are dispassionate have never considered the heights of dispassion available to the organization that controls the currency and monopolizes the ‘legal’ use of deadly force. Which may come from a gun or a syringe.

Canada’s Euthanasia Policies Under Scrutiny As Reports Surface Of Euthanizing A Man For “Hearing Loss”

“Free” health care

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Canada continues its long running demonstration that health care is not the same as health insurance. That ceding control of your health care based on promises from government health ‘insurers’ is a sucker’s move.

It’s been awhile since I mentioned Canada’s health ‘care’ system as a cautionary tale, but with the US Democrat hegemony piling more money into Obamacare with the Inflation Resurgence Reduction Act, you might be interested in what awaits us if the Dem’s universal health care dreams continue.

July 22nd, 2022
As Canada’s health system burns, Trudeau and the provinces debate the firehose
“A public health-care system that was already straining before the pandemic is now visibly coming apart.”

Aug 9, 2022
Healthcare costs for average Canadian family to hit $16,000 this year

A typical Canadian family of four will pay about $15,847 for public healthcare insurance this year, according to a study done by the Fraser Institute.

“Canadians pay a substantial amount of money for healthcare through a variety of taxes, even if we don’t pay directly for medical services,” said Fraser Institute director of health policy studies and study co-author Bacchus Barua in a Tuesday statement.

GOLDSTEIN: Canadian medicare — high costs, long waits, mediocre outcomes

Long before the pandemic hit, the myth of “free” Canadian health care gave us one of the most expensive health-care systems, with some of the longest medical wait times in the developed world, with mediocre outcomes judged by international standards.

Speaking of pandemic: Canada maintains the most draconian conglomeration of CCP virus mandates anywhere outside of China or North Korea. You can look it up. The government can do this because they can say your health insurance doesn’t apply to your health care if you don’t do what you are told.

Some looking it up examples: Make sure you find some info about Tamara Lich.

Artur Pawlowski is another example of free speech suppression. The Powlowski charges have been overturned.

Tamara Lich is still a political prisoner.

Single-nayer

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What We Call National Health Care or Single-Payer Is a Crime Against Humanity

Wait times are rationing. The payer just says “nay” to timely treatment. The Other Club has been writing about wait times in Canada’s single-payer medical system since 2005. Click the tag below.

Elizabeth Warren’s plan would be worse than Canada’s.
The math for Warren’s health-care plan adds up if you accept its ludicrous premise

Rationale to ration

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Medical Welfare Programs Look To Price Another Year Of Life

Medicaid and other medical welfare entitlement programs have created expectations that are bigger than the resources available to meet them. As a result, some welfare bureaucracies are looking to ration expensive drugs through a controversial method designed to put a price on the value of a human life.

If a beneficiary of a social welfare program needs a particular drug whose price exceeds a predetermined value of a “quality-adjusted life year” for the individual, under this method, that person would not get the drug. It is already in use in Great Britain’s single-payer health care system and in other nations. Some in the U.S. think it should be used here, too.

When the government pays for something, it gives bureaucrats a taxpayer-based rationale to refuse to pay for it.

See the Green New Deal fantasy: It’s a list of things, including electricity, gasoline, home heating, land use, product design, hourly wages, preferred occupation, food choice, and, yes, health care; all of which will be rationed or regulated. Why? In order to implement their view of “social, economic, racial, regional and gender-based justice and equality”

Is it any wonder GND proponents support “some are more equal than others” thugs like Venezuela’s Maduro and Cuba’s Castro?

Medicare for all

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The Road to Venezuela.
NHS ‘rationing leaves patients in pain’

Britain implemented the health care policy being urged upon us by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders in 1948.

Stein’s Law: If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.

Rombamacare and 2012

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Bush was excoriated because he couldn’t tell the MSM about mistakes he had made. Obama does not recognize the possibility that someone who stopped the oceans from rising could ever make a mistake. Conventional wisdom has Bush as an idiot, Obama as a genius.

Mitt Romney also has a reputation as a smart guy, moreover one who understands business and finance. He has an easy path to turn a mistake into a benefit. He could say, “Federalism is, among other things, about the idea that individual states can serve as venues for policy experiments. I led Massachusetts in such an experiment: I was instrumental in designing a state mandated health insurance system upon which Obamacare was modeled. My plan has been a disaster for Massachusetts.

Ironically, that lesson was made possible by the vestigial Federalism which President Obama seeks to finally destroy via initiatives like his own health care mandate. I am able to learn from my mistake, so should the country.

The broader lesson is that central planning cannot replace the free market, no matter how smart the central planner thinks he is. I will not forget that again.“

Since Romney apparently cannot do this simple and intelligent thing, I’d agree with this analysis.

Copyright 2005-2019

Coming to a health care system near you

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TOC noted this on Sunday:
Obesity Rating for Every American Must Be Included in Stimulus-Mandated Electronic Health Records, Says HHS

Then this popped up:
Germany Weighs Tax on the Obese

Marco Wanderwitz, a conservative member of parliament for the German state of Saxony, said it is unfair and unsustainable for the taxpayer to carry the entire cost of treating obesity-related illnesses in the public health system.

Right. Force the taxpayers to fund health care, giving government a financial interest which is parlayed into reasons government has to protect the taxpayers from the costs: “Since we can’t afford this entitlement we passed, and we’re not going to repeal it, we have to raise taxes on those with the wrong obesity profile.  It’s not rationing, though.”

In Germany, teachers have a suggested plan to satisfy the government’s need to know your weight.

The German teachers association recently called for school kids to be weighed each day, The Daily Telegraph said.

The fat kids could then be reported to social services, who could send them to health clinics.

And put the parents on a list. And issue badges.


Do you consider it possible that this scenario will be applied here once all Americans’ BMI is recorded and government costs for health care become even more unsustainable?

Copyright 2005-2019