Can the Government Really Provide Good Health Care?

Can the Government Really Provide Good Health Care?


Let’s put the favorite tool of the liberals – emotion - aside for a few minutes. We’ll get back to that soon – TRUST ME! Emotion aside let’s look logically at health care first. First of all what the government is calling “health care” is really health insurance! Health care is doctor visits and hospitalization.

Here is my first and most important logical point. You can go into the doctor without health insurance. In fact you not only can you should! It will cost you less overall if you do. If you pay for a health insurance policy where there is a low deductible to pay for doctor visits it will cost you more per year than you would ever go for visits. If you don't have the $50 that it takes to visit a doctor many doctors will work with indigent, OR you can go to a county clinic. No one has to go without health care. That’s the logical part.

The emotional part is that the doctor will treat you better. He will have more time to spend with you. You will be treated as a patient – not a number or a customer. For a simple sick visit the doctor will be do the work for around $50.00. For a well visit he will charge a little bit more. The emotional part of this is that you got treated better for a small amount of money.

Logical point number two goes like this. You can go to a hospital without insurance as well. You have two options here. The first is that you can go and make payment arrangements. If you are able to keep up the payment arrangements they will collect on you so it is best to have insurance for hospitalizations – ALWAYS! IF YOU CANNOT PAY HOWEVER – and you know that going in, you can apply for charity care. You will be labeled as indigent – which affects some other things in your credit and such so again so it is best to have insurance for hospitalizations – ALWAYS!

But the point is you don’t need it. Hospitals cannot turn you away.

Now let’s talk logically about government control for a second. How well does the government run ANYTHING? Let’s look at Amtrak – our Vice President’s claim to fame. Has Amtrak ever operated at a profit? How about your local transit system? No millions – or in the case of Amtrak billions – of dollars goes into running it every year. And since we are talking about government run health care lets look at the two three that our Federal Government runs right now – the Veterans Administrations Hospitals system, Medicare and Medicaid. In my experience veterans tell me all the time that the Army will kill you one way or the other. The first is in war the second is in the VA hospital. While they usually smile when they say it there is a deep sadness to their joke. How sad that we treat our returning hero soldiers and sailors like that.

Then let’s go to Medicare. First of all it is going broke. Secondly it does not even begin to cover many of the costs that retired people will accumulate. Those costs must be covered with a secondary policy from a private insurance company – called a supplement. OR the senior can have Medicare make premium payments toward a private health insurance company under a program called Medicare Advantage. This is generally infinitely better coverage but again Medicare cannot afford to pay for all coverage on the top of the line plans and the Medicare recipient must a pay a portion of their premiums AND Medicare is still going broke!

Our last stellar example of Government Health Care is Medicaid. Talk to any proponent about Medicaid and watch them quickly change the subject. The program is going broke at a record breaking pace. The care is woeful and ALL Medicaid patients are treated disgracefully. If you doubt that just go to the ward side of your nearest Nursing Home. What goes on there is deplorable.

So much for the logical part of the government running our health care – now let’s tackle the emotional side. Imagine your child now hit by a car crossing the street. Your child is taken by ambulance. If that is government, how soon will it get there? Plus based on the fact that even our local governments are charging now for ambulance and paramedic services you may still have to pay. (Medicare doesn’t pay 100% for ambulance.) So let’s imagine that your child must lie in the street for even five minutes more than a private ambulance service would offer. How does that make you feel?

Now once he gets to the hospital how long does he have to wait in the E.R? Let’s say that with typical waits for universal health care in other countries he has to wait even another 15 minutes longer than he waits now, how does that feel?

Surgery is needed. Surgical wait times in other universal health care systems averages between days and months. Even in critical cases.

Now go to your nearest Nursing Home and go to the ward side – the Medicaid side - and imagine your child waiting for hours to get a diaper changed, or his pain meds. Imagine your child is now in distress and ringing the nurses bell and no one comes. That is what happens now in our government run health care system now.

How does that make you feel?

Now let's answer the favorite emotional plea of proponents of Universal Health Care. "There are over 50 Million people without health care in the United States!" Remember the first paragraph in this post. I stated that 50 million people do not have health insurance. That is because health insurance is expensive. That however is a free market problem that cannot be legislated out of existence.

There are solutions and those will happen soon.

I started out with a question. I will ask it again. Can the Government Really Provide Good Health Care?


Copyright 2009 Dennis Rowley