Robert Samuelson in the Washington Post raises some compelling points regarding the current medical care bills being debated in D.C.
President Obama’s critics sometimes say that he is engineering a government takeover of health care or even introducing “socialized medicine” into America. These allegations are wildly overblown. Government already dominates health care, one-sixth of the economy. It pays directly or indirectly for roughly half of all health costs. Medicine is pervasively regulated, from drug approvals to nursing-home rules. There is no “free market” in health care.
Instead of “reform,” the current proposals should be identified as an enlargement of the status quo – according to Samuelson – that “increasingly assigns economic resources and political choice to an unrestrained medical-industrial complex.”
Does anyone honestly beleive that a small group of flawed, self-interested politicians can effectively micro-manage the medical care and health insurance industries? Even if you are naive enough to answer that question in the affirmative, what business is it of the government’s what is included in your health insurance policy or which medical procedures you and your doctor decide upon and how much you pay for it?
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