11.21.2008

More Bad News on Nationalized Health Care

Paul Hsieh at We Stand FIRM tells of some disappointing news: Insurers Asking To Be Socialized. As the WSJ article I wrote about yesterday predicted, Paul notes that this will likely destroy private insurance and send the US into full rationing mode just like Canada and England.

He goes on to quote a passage from Leonard Peikoff's essay Health Care is Not a Right that serves as a frightening parable of where this course will take us, and ends with the following warning and challenge:
Whether the insurers realize it or not, they're committing slow suicide, and threatening to take the rest of us down with them.

Whether we let them is up to us...
As the drumbeat for health care nationalization grows louder, it's clear that we have one hell of a battle ahead of us if we want to reverse course and move toward a true free market in health care.

I must admit, it looks quite bleak. Even if the Republicans can keep their filibuster power in the Senate, I have little cause to think they will make a principled stand for the cause of individual rights. Forces on both the Left and Right seem to agree that "single-payer" care is coming (and is also the right thing to do), and the American people are so conditioned to look to the government to solve all problems that many will embrace this horrific development as Obamanna from heaven.

Now that insurers are asking for it, and prominent physicians groups are advocating for it, will the voices of reason even be heard? I have a sinking feeling that the Obama-Baucus plan won't meet nearly the level of resistance that Hillary Clinton's plan got in the 90s. We're in for dark times, indeed.

1 comment:

Burgess Laughlin said...

We are indeed facing dark times, but these times have been in the making for at least a generation, say, 30 years or so. (And of course the roots go back centuries.)

Statism in health care is rising, but statism is also rising almost everywhere in our economy. What should be done? This question at first seems bewildering--because of the many problems looming; because of the many possible approaches and strategies; and because each individual who wants to fight for a better world must figure out for himself which course of action--if any--to take.

My suggestion for getting through the confusion is to be intensely and personally selfish. This might mean picking one battlefield that one can become an expert in, a battlefield that involves one's highest personal values. I call this "in-line activism," that is, in line with one's own highest values (one's beloved work, for example). I explain it here (Making Progress, Aug. 1 and 8 posts, 2008).

Activism--in whatever form one chooses--is not guaranteed to succeed. But doing nothing is guaranteed to accomplish nothing in making one's own world better. However, some individuals are already changing the world for the better through their work. There is no need for them to engage in activism--unless they choose to.