Highlights from CPAC: The Perils of Price Controls and Socialized Medicine

Couldn’t make it to CPAC this year? Don’t worry, we have highlights from the panel discussion: “Prescription for Failure: The Ills of Socialized Medicine,” that featured Barbara Kolm, Director of the Austrian Economics Center; Marc Palazzo, Executive Director of the Coalition Against Socialized Medicine; Author Dr. David Schneider; and moderated by Peter Pitts, Center for Medicine in the Public Interest.

The panel touched on a number of topics involving socialized medicine including price controls and Medicare for All. We’ve clipped a few highlights of the panelists who outlined the dangers of adopting a socialized system here in the U.S.

“I’d be careful to fall in to the trap of price controls“
As an economist from Vienna, Barbara Kolm has witnessed up close the damages incorporating socialist price controls can have on the health care industry.

Barbara: “I’d be very careful and don’t fall into this trap of [price controls]. Do not make the same mistake the Europeans have made because it will cost you dollars, and dollars, and dollars. Look at the European budgets—I only have to say that… Because [the U.S.] should [out-perform] other nations. You want to be better than other nations…”

A One-Size-FIts-All System Does Not Work
Describing the perils of a Medicare for All system, Barbara touched on why it’s important for America to keep intact a health care system that focuses on the need of individuals:

“We have made a lot of mistakes…Most of them with the socialist idea of making everything the same, one-size-fits-all, and it doesn’t because we are all individuals with different talents and issues…It doesn’t work to provide the same solution for everybody…”

All of the Democratic Candidates Want Medicare for All
CASM Executive Director Marc Palazzo also warned the crowd against buying into a “public option” or “Medicare-for-all-who-want-it” approach:

“I’m going to tell everyone a secret here and don’t tell anybody—all the Democratic candidates want to get to single-payer eventually. That’s the goal, that’s the objective…That’s why this fight is serious, that’s why we need everyone in this room engaged.”

The panel did an excellent job highlighting the perils of socialized medicine. Around the world, socialized medicine has proven to reduce access to quality care and choice of doctors, stifle life-saving innovation through price controls, and dramatically increase the tax burden on hard-working, middle-class families.

America must say “NO” to socialized medicine!