Introduction
Background on problems caused by government intervention in the health care market. PLEASE NOTE: THIS INCLUDES the UNITED STATES health care industry, which is HEAVILY regulated...with the usual results.
Worldwide Experiments in Socialism
Links, articles and figures detailing widespread and specific problems in countries with varying degrees of socialized health care.
Americans Blindly Supporting More Government Socialist health care system supporters often point to sky rocketing health insurance prices in the U.S. as a problem with a "capitalist" system. However, all of the pervasive problems within the U.S. health care system are a direct result of statism.
I once believed in the lofty goal of "universal health care". Who wouldn't support that goal? Doesn't everyone have a "right" to health care?
It was easy to agree with a meaningless campaign promise such as "Affordable Health Care for All". It takes effort to research the topic and understand economic reasoning and history.
Once I questioned the sound bites, I realized that government intervention in the market (e.g., Medicare, FDA regulations, physician licensing, insurance regulations) is the reason for artificially high health care prices.
So-called Universal Healthcare amplifies all problems:
1) Reduces patient incentives to find the best possible prices for the best possible services/products available.
Patients in the U.S. who receive "free" (taxpayer-funded) health care have no incentive to conserve their health care dollars. Care is "free" so they visit the doctor's office several times a month or request "free" prescriptions for over-the-counter medication such as Tylenol.
2) Reduces physician incentives to provide competitive care and reduces drug companies' incentives to provide new drugs and treatments. With no incentive to provide quality care, physicians and nurses leave the government-monopolized area for better opportunities in a freer country. Shortages result. Drug companies are hindered by price controls and regulations and soon cease research and development of new medication. In the U.S., start-up drug companies cannot afford to run the FDA gauntlet, so the market is dominated by a few established corporations.
3) Steals from your wallet to pay for my health care. Yes, you do have a right to health care, just as you have a right to food, shelter and property. However, you have no "right" to force others to provide these things for you - All "free" medical care is subsidized through taxes stolen from other people.
4) The quality of "free" health care will deteriorate and the average citizen will get sicker. As the poor and middle-class wait in agony for simple procedures, those with resources can travel to other countries for treatment.
6) Destroys your liberty. When you blindly support a system that bestows power on politicians and bureaucrats, they will receive their orders from those with the most money - and this will not be you, your friends or your family. The power of government will be used against you as you are forced to use medicines or accept treatments from well-connected health care companies.
Conversely, if government power is eliminated (e.g., abolish the FDA - whose restrictions benefit the most powerful companies by eliminating most competition), those same companies would have to use their funds and resources to sell their drugs to the most people in the least expensive, most reliable and safest way. They would need to outperform their competitors to get your money - otherwise they lose business.
Most links below direct you to newspaper articles from different established sources and different countries, including the New York Times, the BBC, the Daily Mail, ABC or CNN. These articles show widespread problems such as physician shortages or increased waiting times that are inevitable when businesses are monopolized by the government.
Other links below direct you to articles from free-market institutes and groups. The authors use facts and logic to explain the superiority of the free-market process when compared to government bureaucracies. You can dismiss these links as "libertarian propaganda" or you can read the reports and question your own emotionally-based opinion, as I did. Please see Harry Browne's excellent Compassion of the mind and ask yourself if you are hurting others with your socialism.
Great Britain's National Health Service (NHS) was created on July 5, 1948. As with all government programs, bureaucrats underestimated initial cost projections. First-year operating costs of NHS were 52 million pounds higher than original estimates1 as Britons saturated the so-called free system.
Many decades of shortages, misery and suffering followed until 1989, when some market-based health care competition was reintroduced to the British citizens2.
Unfortunately for those requiring care, a mostly socialist health care system still has problems. The articles and commentaries in this section identify some disasters caused by government intervention in the British health care system.
Creeping Privatization? Shortages of skilled workers, low morale, long queues for services, crumbling facilities and corrupt practises. - Roland Watson, August 6, 2001 [LewRockwell.com]
Hospitals on the verge of a breakdown Switzerland’s hospitals may be the envy of the world, but rising health costs and patient numbers are increasingly putting the system under strain. - July 24, 2003 [swissinfo.org]
Netherlands aims to tackle health divide Socioeconomic inequalities remain similar to those in the United Kingdom and Scandinavian countries, despite a sustained effort over 20 years. - Tony Sheldon, October 13, 2001 [British Medical Journal]
A Hard Lesson About Socialized Medicine Europeans are now learning some hard facts of life about socialized medicine: there's no such thing as a free lunch.- September 23, 1996 [CATO]
Paying The Price For Drugs In Europe Whether they admit it or not, those who advocate 'making drugs more affordable for American seniors' are actually headed down a slippery slope to price controls, free-market analysts charge.- Stephen D. Moore, July 21, 2000 [NCPA]
Parliament unanimously passed the Canada Health Act in 1984 and established a single-payer, publicly-financed health care system. To ensure a true government monopoly (is there any other kind?) Canadian provinces outlawed private health insurance.
Chaoulli v. Quebec UPDATE (June 9, 2005): In a 4 to 3 decision, the Canadian Supreme Court struck down Quebec's law that prohibits private medical insurance.
Private medical clinic opens in Montreal ...it answers, "an ever-increasing demand from the public for greater accessibility and quality of health services." - October 13, 2004 [CTV.ca]
Need surgery? Here's how long you'll wait "It's inhuman. The quality of my life is horrible and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it." - Jason Fekete, July 28, 2004 [Calgary Herald]
Docs, nurses fed up Canadian doctors and nurses are fed up with inter-governmental "bickering" that is dragging out wait times and causing more pain and suffering for patients. - July 28, 2004 [Winnipeg Sun]
Free Health Care? ...in some cases, patients die on the waiting list because they become too sick to tolerate a procedure. - Walter E. Williams, July 24, 2004 [CATO]
The truth about Canada's ailing health-care system All the major candidates in Canada's recent national election acknowledged that the country's health-care system is failing Canadians. - Robert J. Cihak, July 13, 2004 [The Seattle Times]
Health-care crisis looms, even with new money Canada's health-care system is "five to 10 years" from the breaking point -- even with cash injections from government, says the new president of the B.C. Medical Association. - Doug Alexander, July 5, 2004 [Vancouver Sun]
Emergency room delays a strong campaign factor "Go into the emergency room — it is the most pitiful piece of work you ever seen in your life." - David Bruser, June 22, 2004 [Toronto Star]
Canadian Health Care in Crisis Analyst visits NC to describe how single-payer health care really works in practice. - Donna Martinez, June 17, 2004 [Carolina Journal]
Quebec cancer patients sue over wait Women waited months for radiation; lawsuit could cost system $50-million. - Ingrid Peritz, March 11, 2004 [The Globe and Mail]
Health care: no waiting lists 'You get knee surgery within two days ... try and get that in human hospitals.' Canada's [private] pet health-insurance industry is projected to grow at roughly 50 per cent a year... - Robert Scalia, November 30, 2003 [Montreal Gazette]
Burnout is now doctors' ailment Almost half of Canadian doctors say they're burned out, emotionally exhausted and blame medicine for putting a drain on their family life. - Karen Palmer, August 20, 2003 [Toronto Star]
New MRI clinic in row over poaching While she insists she's not making any money off the venture, she says it provides an income allowance for her and her husband, the other principal in the company. - Theresa Boyle and Robert Benzie, July 28, 2003 [Toronto Star]
Price Controls and Overall Drug Spending The Canadian system, however, tends to push up overall spending on prescription drugs, despite the low prices for some brand name ones. - John Melby, July 2, 2003 [Buckeye Institute]
Socialized medicine, although of poor quality, is very expensive;
Political compromise is the result;
Socialized medicine is both a consequence and a great contributor to the idea that economic conditions should be equalized by coercion. - Pierre Lemieux [The Freeman]
Canadian Health Care ...if Canadians knew as much as they think they do about the economic and moral workings of Medicare, they might not be as enthusiastic as they are about their cherished right to 'free' health care. - Andrei Kreptul, August 30, 2000 [Mises]
Loved to Death: America's Unresolved Health-Care Crisis As Canada's national government slashes spending on medical care in order to reduce the deficit, local provinces are reducing medical staff. In Ontario, pregnant women are being sent to Detroit because no obstetricians are available. Specialists of all kinds are in short supply. Patients have to wait eight weeks for an MRI, ten weeks for referral to a specialist, and four months for heart bypass surgery. - Michael J. Hurd, November 1997 [Liberty Haven]
Health of the State (commentary by a cancer survivor) I tell you this not to alarm you, to elicit sympathy, or to bore you. I tell you because the episode has been, for me, a salutary lesson (just in case I needed one) in why the government should not be allowed anywhere near a syringe, a dressing, a scalpel, an oxygen mask, a tissue sample — anything to do with health.
Capitalism Comes to Russian Health Care With the "free" government-run health system in Russia in a state of collapse, an increasing amount of health care is being provided by for-profit clinics and hospitals. - Michael Wines, December 22, 2000 [New York Times]
Socialized Health-Care Nightmare In contrast to the impression created by the liberal American media, health-care institutions in Russia were at least fifty years behind the average U.S. level. - Yuri Maltsev and Louise Omdahl, November 1994 [Liberty Haven]
The Cuban Government has implemented a two-tiered medical system (e.g. "medical apartheid") that caters to foreign tourists while denying native Cubans access to basic medical necessities (at least it is "free" to them). This attempt to draw foreign dollars is one of many programs that were necessary once the Soviet subsidies ended in the early nineties.
Castro says still in full control after fall The Communist dictator received prompt medical care to repair his shattered kneecap. He even used his cell phone from the ambulance. If only his countrymen had similar access to service and "evil" capitalist technology... - Anthony Boadle, October 22, 2004 [Reuters]
Bad Cuban Medicine Begging for medicines is common in Havana - next to begging for money to feed children, it is the most common plea... - Larry Solomon, April 15, 2003 [Capitalism Magazine]
No charge for trips to emergency department The figures show most people who arrive at the emergency departments don't need to be there.- Alison Brown, December 17, 2004 [Rotorua Daily Post]
Australia's universal health care scheme is relatively new (introduced in 1983, which built on the 1974 Medibank program). As with all socialized health care systems, there is a mixture of public versus private care (approximately 30% of Australians also retain private health insurance). As a result, the private patients receive better care than their medicare counterparts.
The salary caps and artificial increase in demand for care that always occur in a national health care system are resulting in predictable physician shortages.
All of the pervasive problems within the U.S. health care system are a direct result of statism. Unfortunately, most Americans buy into the feel-good soundbites and look to the socialist utopia to provide answers, not understanding that additional government intervention always worsens the problems.
Not even the so-called experts who villify capitalism understand the difference between Statism/socialism and liberty (see Dr. Arnold S. Relman's For-Profit Health Care: Expensive, Inefficient and Inequitable, in which he refers to "HMOs that would be paid by the government" as "care under the private system").
"War on Fat" Creeping socialism gives government bureaucrats the power to pry into your eating habits for "the public good".
Deadly shortage The federal ban on profit incentive is killing those awaiting organ transplants.
Bad Medicine The blame for the inadequacies caused by government’s intrusion into health care and other industries does not lie solely on the shoulders of politicians and bureaucrats; it also lies on the masses. - Emiliano Antunez, June 24, 2005 [Strike the Root]
Health Care in John Kerry's World Health care and politics are a toxic combination for a life and death issue. - September 21, 2004 [Capitalism Magazine]
The Therapeutic Nanny State This new proposal threatens to force millions of kids to undergo psychiatric screening, whether their parents consent or not. - Rep. Ron Paul, MD, September 21, 2004 [LewRockwell.com]
Republican Health Care Contradictions Government provided health care can increase only in inverse proportion to freedom. - Richard E. Ralston, August 30, 2004 [Capitalism Magazine]
100 Years of Medical Robbery A happy 100th birthday to the Council on Medical Education...and for the sake of all our health, hopefully not too many more. - Dale Steinreich, June 11, 2004 [Mises]
Feeding Obesity The state creates programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, which force one segment of the tax-paying population to pay for the health care of another segment, creating the incentive to avoid taking personal responsibility for one’s own life and to make others suffer the consequences. - Scott McPherson, February 13, 2004 [The Future of Freedom Foundation]
Republican Socialism Congress worked late into the night this past weekend to pass a Medicare prescription drug bill that represents the single largest expansion of the federal welfare state since the Great Society programs of the 1960s. - Rep. Ron Paul, MD, November 25, 2003 [LewRockwell.com]
Why Medicare Expansion is Wrong Adding prescription drug coverage to Medicare, as Congress is poised to do, is merely more socialism --- it will neither help seniors nor is its passage likely to gain their votes. - Scott Holleran, November 22, 2003 [Capitalism Magazine]
Socialized Medicine in America Thanks to the untiring efforts of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Americans have been faced with the greatest expansion of the government into medical care since the 1960s. - Timothy D. Terrell, November 2003 [Mises]
Kill Bill - To Expand Medicare ...expanding Medicare is among the most ill conceived notions in American politics. - Scott Holleran, October 14, 2003 [Capitalism Magazine]
Health Care Interventionism: A Case Study The demise of HealthPlus illustrates the unintended consequences that accompany any government intervention of market forces. - Christopher Westley, January 21, 2003 [Mises]
New Senate Leader Must 'Do No Harm' There is nothing in Frist’s Senate record to show that he’s even considered free-market options or principles for rescuing America’s rapidly dying healthcare system. - S.M. Oliva, January 2, 2003 [Capitalism Magazine]
Drugs and Politics - Thomas Sowell, November 27, 2001 [Capitalism Magazine]
Fun With Numbers "After reading Christopher Westley’s fine article, The Carriage-Trade Trend, I got to thinking about the imminent demise of the health-care industry in this country." - Robert Klassen, August 6, 2001 [LewRockwell.com]
Socialized Medicine in 10 Easy Steps HIPAA, MSAs, S-CHIP show how Republicans unwittingly lead the political parade toward increasing government control of health care. - Merrill Matthews Jr., Ph.D., June 30, 2001 [Capitalism Magazine]
Medicare should be scrapped, eventually Medicare was a bad mistake. We can repeat it -- over and over -- or we can scrap a program whose time never came. - Jon E. Dougherty, October 16, 2000 [WorldNetDaily]
Medicare snafu breaks podiatrist Agency's non-payment of claims forces closure of doctor's office. - Jon E. Dougherty, July 30, 2000 [WorldNetDaily]
The War on Online Drugs The Clinton administration wasn’t content with blowing up a pharmacy in the Sudan; now it wants to blow up hundreds of them on the web. - Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., December 30, 1999 [Mises]
Medicare in Red According to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), red is the fashion color for the summer. Red tape, that is. - Alejandra Arguello Camerlengo, July 14, 1999 [CATO]
The Creeping Takeover of Medical Care President Clinton favors barring health-insurance companies from using genetic testing to determine whom they will insure. - Sheldon Richman, July 1997 [The Future of Freedom Foundation]
More Kid Stuff Advocates of politically controlled universal health care coverage have retooled their offensive game plan. Uninsured children will serve as blocking backs for an end run around opposition to regulatory mandates, one-size-fits-all benefit plans, bureaucratic rigidities, and taxpayer-financed cross subsidies. Welcome to the opening round of Village Care 1997. - Tom Miller, January 1, 1997 [CEI]
Blank Check for Mental Health A few years ago a young woman in Pittsburgh, who had trouble getting to work on time, found a psychiatrist who declared that she suffered from 'chronic lateness syndrome.' Now, if the U.S. Senate has its way, every insurance policy in America will be forced to pay for this woman and millions like her. - Michael Tanner, December 31, 1996 [CATO]
The Medical Monopoly: Protecting Consumers or Limiting Competition? Nonphysician providers of medical care are in high demand in the United States. But licensure laws and federal regulations limit their scope of practice and restrict access to their services. The result has almost inevitably been less choice and higher prices for consumers. - Sue A. Blevins, December 15, 1995 [CATO]
Free Medicine Rising prices pushed the cost of medical treatment beyond the range of more and more people. But, unfortunately, the original culprits — Medicare and Medicaid — were not identified as the cause. - William Dale, February 1994 [The Future of Freedom Foundation]
Bill Clinton and Socialized Medicine That Bill Clinton could get the emergency heart care his survival required within 3 days underscores a life-and-death difference between medicine under capitalism and under socialism. - Andrew Bernstein, September 23, 2004 [Capitalism Magazine]
Free Market Medicine As with all goods and services, medical care is best delivered by the free market, with competition and financial incentives keeping costs down. - Rep. Ron Paul, MD, May 5, 2004 [LewRockwell.com]
Nationalized Health Care Will Cut Costs? It Just Ain’t So! Curiously, interventionists believe consumers are (a) too ignorant to identify bad doctors on a free market, but (b) capable of voting for good politicians to improve health care. - Gene Callahan and Robert Murphy, January 2004 [FEE]
Health-Care Socialism It is the responsibility of each and every American to provide for his own medical needs, by contracting for such services on the free and open market. - Scott McPherson, June 2003 [The Future of Freedom Foundation]
'Universal health care' Before we even consider throwing away what works in favor of something that has failed repeatedly, we need to stop reacting to words and start looking at facts. - Thomas Sowell, May 6, 2003 [TownHall.com]
Homeopathy, Economics, and Government ...it can be seen that the current attempts at regulation have roots as far back as 200 years ago. - Linda Johnston, MD, DHt, October 3, 2002 [LewRockwell.com]
Bad Medicine Those who are constantly pointing to the prices and the practices of other nations when it comes to pharmaceutical drugs ignore the fact that those other nations lag far behind the United States when it comes to creating new medicines. - Thomas Sowell, August 13, 2002 [Capitalism Magazine]
Health Care is a Privilege, Not an Entitlement for All Without "excessive profits" of insurance and pharmaceutical companies, there would be no funding for vital research. - Rick Smith, December 21, 2001 [Capitalism Magazine]
Footnotes[top] 1 - M. Foot (1997). Aneurin Bevan: A Biography. New York: Atheneum. [Great Britain] 2 - P. Day and R. Klein, "Britain's Health Care Experiment," Health Affairs, Fall 1991, pp. 39-59; and A. Enthoven, "Internal Market Reform of the British Health Service," Health Affairs, Fall 1991, pp. 60-70. [Great Britain]
