Government run health care systems all fail, and for the same reasons that government cannot effectively produce or distribute other commodities. The unimpeachable economic truth is that a few smart people who try to devise grandiose business solutions – no matter how smart they are – are not as smart as all of us. No Politburo, no think tank, and certainly no group of unelected Obama Administration bureaucrats can think their way through the millions and millions of decisions that millions and millions of individuals make daily about their own health care – individuals acting in their own economic interest, and ultimately in the best interest of their own health. If the government controlled toasters – claiming toast to be a right of all Americans – the same thing would happen. Pretty soon the DC Oligarchs would have to eat their caviar on pita chips, because there would be an “unexpected” shortage of toast.
And many Americans get this point. The success of the Mises Institute, and book sales for Von Hayek and Hazlitt speak to the renewed interest in economic reality. Americans of all strata hunger for the truth rather than the feel good solutions we have been accepting for decades. And so it is harder to “hornswaggle” the average American. I had a plumber come into my office with a paginated tabbed copy of the Affordable Care Act when it was first made public, and he wanted me to clarify a few passages. Nancy Pelosi may not have read it, but he had. And he didn’t like what he read.
Here comes Jonathan Gruber, an architect of Obamacare, and self-appointed oligarch, who admits that, in order to pass the Affordable Care Act into law, he and others purposely made the bill hard to understand. If Obamacare had been understood (he wisely reasoned) it would have been rejected. And although he mentions the “stupidity of the American voter,” in truth, he knows that the passing of PPACA was not due to the “stupidity of the American voter” but to the gullibility of the American legislator. After all it was the members of Congress and Senate he had to “fool” – since they were the voters that made this nightmare a reality.
This whole scenario is only a surprise to those who do not understand the history of the 20th century and totalitarianism. Everything the Soviets did they did for the “good of the people.” I have never had a Christian lie about his faith in order to sell me on it. But, repeatedly, in the history of the world, people of the “educated” class rise to positions of power and after a while feel anointed, or at least smarter than everyone else. Along the way, they develop so much “faith” in their own abilities – because after all they understand all the complicated machinery of government – that they think lying, obfuscating, and any other chicanery is okay to pass laws such as Obamacare.
The truth, Mr. Gruber, is you have gotten lost in the weeds and in your own overblown ego. Principles of freedom are easy to understand. You do not steal from some people to give to others, no matter how charitable your motive. You do not make agreements based on lies. And you do not concentrate power into a few hands – you let power rest with the population, and govern by consent. Obamacare is a perfect example. Because you cannot possibly control a vast, complicated, self-organizing system with a few pen strokes, you have not improved our health. But, you have taken our liberty. Today, in the “land of the free” a private individual cannot purchase health insurance except during the periods of open enrollment (now November to February) that you benevolently allow us. I have very limited choices of policies, and my access to physicians is deteriorating rapidly. If you think this is a success I hate to think of your next great plan.
I am old enough to remember the days when doctors served their patients without people like you meddling about. Amazingly, in 1970 my father treated people in his office for a $3 fee and went to their house for $6. Back then we didn’t need a patients’ bill of rights or privacy rules. Insurance was totally portable and generally low cost. Today, it costs on average $68 to bill a third party such as Medicare for services rendered. Imagine if you go to a grocery store and purchase $5 of tomatoes, then pay $68 for the bag in which to carry them home. You and your “smart friends” have given us just this scenario in medicine since the advent of Medicare in 1964. As Ronald Reagan opined, “When government is the problem, more government is not the answer.”
Time to go home and let the “stupid American voter” grownups handle this.
