Obamalyptic healthcare

It's character, stupid, is what I always say. If you do not have a virtuous people then your socialized medicine or your market driven medicine will stink to high heaven and leave many vulnerable people in the lurch. I would like to see a market-driven system where health insurance is for catastrophes, like car insurance. I don't buy car insurance that pays for my oil changes and brake maintenance. I'd like to see the private sector do to medical procedures what it has done to the cost of laptops and digital cameras and other high tech gadgets that have gotten way better and gone down in price through competition. I'd like to see people with a lot more of their money untaxed to they can give to charity and build hospitals that reflect their religious ethos and serve the poor and the weak. But if you have people who think only in dog-eat-dog terms, greed will rule the day. But, if greed is going to rule, then it's better to have capitalism than socialism, because the market has a way of rewarding hard work and creativity. Government kills both.

John Zmirak writes, amusingly as usual:

At least in European socialist countries, the private sector is pretty much locked out of health care. All the money is collected at gunpoint by the government and spread throughout the system, like portions of mystery meat at a high school cafeteria. It's not very good, but at least everybody gets the same amount, and it's hard to game the system. Of course, there's little freedom: If you pack a lunch, it will be confiscated and redistributed -- or eaten by a teacher. You can't save money by dieting, or load up after you've exercised, since the portions are prepaid and standardized. On the up side, the kids don't need to worry about getting enough, or bringing lunch money, or even picking items from the menu: Onto each tin plate splats the same size ice cream scoop of grey, gelatinous protein dosed with vitamins and fiber. Call it Soylent Green.

The system we seem about to establish is much more like a school that privatizes its cafeteria to the Russian mob, then lets the vendors get rich serving foie gras and caviar at jacked up prices. To fund the system, huge thugs named Boris roam the hallways shaking down those kids who didn't spend their lunch money on porn and cigarettes.

With uniquely American ingenuity, we're combining socialist coercion with corporate greed and sleazy price-fixing, all justified by recourse to envy, guilt, and fear. The trial lawyers will continue to drive our doctors out of business -- and the price of services up. The insurance companies will pass along to all of us the cost of "insuring" new patients who only sign up once they're diagnosed with stage-three cancer. These companies will reap a giant windfall, since now private citizens will be legally obliged to buy their products -- like those little green uniforms in Maoist China. (Imagine what a killing those clothiers made!) Hospitals run by apostate nuns will finally be able to get reimbursed for all the services they've been rendering to deadbeats -- so funding a few abortions here and there seems a trivial price to pay. And that "pro-life" executive order Rep. Bart Stupak bravely fought to put in place? Give federal judges five years with this system, and taxpayers will be funding sex changes in Catholic hospitals for illegal immigrants, while hard-working citizens argue with bureaucrats that continued chemotherapy isn't a "heroic intervention." Like Borat, I love Amerika!