Tuesday, July 01, 2014

When government controls health care. The VA and military hospital examples.

By now, everyone is familiar with the horrible VA medical scandal.  However, military hospitals may be just as bad, if not worse.  Both are examples of government "let's pretend facades" (see post below).  Anyone who thinks that Obamacare doesn't go far enough and that the government should control the entire medical care system is nuts.  While private sector medical care is way too expensive and far from perfect, it beats the leftist alternatives.  I once though that if we could reduce or eliminate the profit motive from many endeavors, many of the problems would disappear.  Yes, I was a starry-eyed idealist once.  The problem is that even government programs have budgets and the quality of  manypeople running the programs is not  encouraging. Human nature being what it is, the same problems will occur in the government programs.  The same personal, interpersonal and bureaucratic dysfunctions that happen at GM happen in governments. However, without the competition of private sector ventures, and the ability of government to coverup, the state-run alternative is even worse.  At least in the private sector consumers have some choices.  Hopefully the bad choices will go out of business as consumers go where the best services are available.  If you're fed up with GM go to another company, it doesn't even have to be an American company.  When government takes over, there is no other place for most people to go.  Only the wealthy can avoid the government system.  Polticians and their cronies, will, of course, get first class treatment from the government program while the average citizen will just become another number. Government programs usually get bigger and bigger.  Groups and individuals (contractors, sub-contractors, professionals, unions, etc.) learn to work the government system to their advantage and want more, not less.  Lots of doctors who are getting rich on Medicare, etc. support the Democrats and expansion of government programs. Government programs don't die because too many powerful people and interests are getting fat on the government $. Another example of public sector catastrophes is Dallas' county-run Parkland Hospital.

2 comments:

  1. I couldn't agree more with your statement, " ...without the competition of private sector ventures, and the ability of government to coverup, the state-run alternative is even worse.". You've nailed the problem with your thoughtful commentary. The central government needs to completely remove itself from America's personal healthcare infrastructure, except for their constitutional oversight of interstate relations with commerce. Healthcare policies and incentives should be managed solely by the respective states.

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