The U.S. House Ways & Means Committee held the first congressional hearing on so-called “Medicare for All.” This throws down the gauntlet challenging all Americans for whom property rights, free enterprise and liberty are guiding precepts.
The Left is seriously attempting to sell the government takeover of about one-sixth of the U.S. economy. This has everything to do with property rights. And those promoting government-run health care have neglected to talk about — even denied — the realities of Medicare for None. This proposal would:
• Eliminate traditional Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Medicare Part D, Medicaid and CHIP;
• Eliminate the Medicare Trust Fund;
• Eliminate veterans’ health programs;
• Eliminate private-sector health insurance, including employer-sponsored health benefits;
• Cost taxpayers $3.2 trillion a year; and
• Destroy the innovation ecosystem that produces genomic, proteomic and immunotherapy treatments like new medicines that cure hepatitis C and other diseases, and less invasive medical devices readily available in America but not in socialized medicine countries.
Conservatives for Property Rights has joined the new Coalition Against Socialized Medicine to make common cause with others in picking up the gauntlet.
Understandably, proponents of socialized medicine don’t disclose the ugly truths of what their socialist vision for health care brings: rationed medical care, worsened patient suffering, medical decisionmaking based on government budgets rather than patient need or provider medical determination, quashed innovation, tremendous taxpayer burden and worse.
Those living under socialized medicine in Canada, England and elsewhere routinely face long wait lists to see a doctor or undergo a medical procedure. Government-run health care typically doesn’t offer cutting-edge medicines, medical devices and therapies. Socialized health systems abuse medical innovators, imposing price controls, dictating rates under threat of “take it or else” and expropriating their intellectual property much as China does.
Under socialized medicine, patients, medical providers and innovators are essentially second-class citizens — subservient to government bureaucrats and politicians.
“. . . [U]topian socialists hope to attain their objective by the use of ballots, not bullets . . . whereby the people will vote out free enterprise and vote in socialism,” says Free Enterprise: A Judeo-Christian Defense. This 1980s book notes “. . . it is only by the creation of wealth that the material needs of the poor can be met and upward mobility achieved.”
What’s Medicare for None really about? Abolition of private property. Confiscation of medical property. Punitive taxes. Centralized control of health care finance and industry. Das Kapital, Health Care Edition.