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Problems with Socialized Health Care

Is there a difference between universal health care coverage and universal access to medical care? If the answer to this question is "no" then procuring government run health insurance coverage for every American should be a high priority for our government. But if universal health care and universal health coverage are not the same thing, it may be time to look at this issue from a different perspective.

One thing we can all agree on is that the present system is broken, and needs to be fixed. 43 million Americans are uninsured. Many of them are self-employed or work for a company that does not provide a health care plan. How can these Americans best be insured without a massive increase in taxes or an even greater expansion of the national debt?

The common way of viewing this issue is this: The only solution to this problem is to allow the demand for cheap, individual health insurance to create affordable, types of health insurance plans. The other option is for the government to step in and create some type of Medicare/Medicaid type program in order to provide low cost or free health coverage to low income Americans. Both of these views represent a gross oversimplification of this issue. The alternative solutions that have been proposed in books and newspapers over the past twenty years are almost limitless: Tax-free savings accounts, government run insurance companies, caps on premiums, laws requiring HMOs to provide coverage to people with low incomes, the privatization of Social Security and massive tax cuts couple with the elimination of many social programs have all been proposed. Each of these solutions solves a slightly different problem while failing to solve at least a few of the issues that corrupt the current system.

But what is important to remember during debates about the best way to fix America's health care is that no system is perfect. Socialized medicine in Europe and Canada is often held up as the gold standard to which the American health system should aspire to. But in reality, Britain's Department of Health reported in 2006 that at any given time, nearly 900,000 Britons are waiting for admission to National Health Service hospitals, and shortages force the cancellation of more than 50,000 operations each year. In Sweden, the wait for heart surgery can be as long as 25 weeks, and the average wait for hip replacement surgery is more than a year. It is important to remember that both Britain and Sweden are much smaller than the United States, both in land area and population. These two countries also have taxes on both businesses and individuals that dwarf the current taxes that Americans pay.

Many of the arguments for a universal system of federally funded health care tend to be more emotional than they are logical. "Can Americans look away from their flat-screen TVs long enough to see the need of the people around them?" "We should all sacrifice our luxuries so that the poorest among us don't have to languish under the yoke of the high cost of health care." While there is some validity to these types of statements, a government run health care program is simply unable to effectuate the compassion that the proponents of socialized medicine feel towards the poor. Government systems have a tendency to waste money and resources while taking away freedom of choice from the average American.

Clearly some policy that strikes a balance between the government-controlled program used in Europe and the chaotic, expensive system that now exists here the US is the answer. John McCain, during his presidential campaign, proposed a system that would take the current money spent on national health care in the form of employer subsidies and distribute that to individuals across the board. Some new rules would have to be put in place to regulate how this money was spent, but this type of arrangement could help solve the problem. Other solutions, such as tax-free heath savings accounts are already being used with some success in many states.

One of the advantages of living here in these United States is that the states have the chance to regulate themselves and to act as "laboratories of democracy." A program that will work in Vermont, may not work in California, while a system that may work in California could spell disaster for Ohio. As this debate rages between health insurance companies, politicians, PACs, special interest groups, and the lawyers that represent everyone concerned, it is important to remember that any solution to the current problems with the current system of health care must solve the problem, without taking away the things that make us American.

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