* CHP, #4 of n
Topics: Health
26 Oct 1993
From: ervan
Hillary RC was interviewed today on MacNeil/Lehrer. One of her
first statements was "This plan makes everyone responsible."
No comment.
More ominously, later she said "We can't control costs until
everyone is in the system." Well why not? The government can
spend as little or as much as it wants regardless of whether or
not I am in the system. Of course the real issue is total cost
to everyone. If people are allowed to buy as much as health
care as they want, they might buy more than government
rationing would otherwise provide. Even worse, if people were
allowed to opt out of the system (i.e. be self-insured which is
now to be explicitly prohibited), they would be saving money
and getting better and/or prompter health care (since they
would be paying the desired price instead of the mandated
price). The government could never stand such an embarrassment
of its policies.
The same thing happened with letter delivery. For a period the
government never got around to shutting down private letter
carriers (circa 1870) because the subsidized USPS had an unfair
advantage. Despite that, private carriers starting taking away
much of the business. Lysander Spooner, most notably, was
forced out of business by congressional action. That mistake
is not being made this time. There will be nothing left to
compare against.
A more extreme parallel is the Soviet apologists who insist the
Soviet Union fell, not because of its defense expenditures (the
conventional line), but because the rest of the capitalist
world corrupted pure socialism with trade, ha, ha! They could
have just closed the borders had that been useful. The real
answer is what I already mentioned, capitalism so profoundly
embarrassed socialism that no apology would suffice, only
annihilation.
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