Health Care

Nearly all the industrialized nations of the world provide health care for their citizens. Many also provide health care to any visitor or immigrant who happens to be in their country. But the United States believes in the "Free Market" approach to all problems, including health care. It should be obvious by now that the free market approach does not work for health care. Millions of Americans have no health insurance or health care whatsoever and it is becoming a worsening problem.

Twice in the 2007-2008 year Congress has tried to provide health care for children of lower income parents, but twice President Bush has vetoed their bills. President Bush declares that this would be "socialized medicine." Obviously he views "socialized medicine" as a great evil. Interestingly enough the President, Vice-President, and all of Congress receive "socialized medicine," and I have not heard any complaints from any of them about it. The United States Government provides all of their medical care. They all appear to be very satisfied with the system. "Socialized medicine" seems to be fine for the President and the Congress, but bad for poor children. It is apparently better for the children to die then to be provided with "socialized medicine." This is totally hypocritical.

Medicare for the over 65 crowd seems to be working quite well, but President Bush is trying to privatize Medicare. He is seeing to it that the government subsidizes private insurance companies to provide medical insurance for the elderly. If the free market works better than the government, why is it necessary for the government to subsidize the free market. Obviously the free market does not work for medical insurance and requires government subsidies. Therefore it would be better for the government to simply provide the medical insurance. But that would be too easy. President Bush's actions are hypocritical. He says that he believes in the free market, but sees that it doesn't work, so instead of admitting that it doesn't work, he simply has the government subsidize it. It is not a free market any longer.

Employer health insurance has serious problems because the employee base is a small one, and if one person has catastrophic health problems, all the employees see their premiums skyrocket. If all the people of the United States, 250-300 million, were in one "group plan," the premiums would balance out and the cost would not be so high. Also private insurance companies spend a great deal of money hiring people to deny health care. If everyone simply received the health care they needed, the cost would actually be less. All of the insurance companies could band together to provide insurance for the "one group," but they would not like it because they could not make enormous profits.

Health care does not function in the same way as the other markets. Generally, companies sell a product and make money from it. But in health care, the only way to make money is to sell the product on paper, but refuse to provide the product (health care). To sell a refusal of the product is a complete contradiction in terms. This is why health care does not work the same way as the free market. It is not a straight forward sale of a product. We need a system like Medicare for the entire population of the United States. I have read that Taiwan has based its national health care system on our Medicare system.