Socialized Medicine-Lite in Wisconsin

'The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.' -- Winston Churchill

If only Mr. Churchill had kept that thought in mind when he advocated “universal” health-care for all British citizens. He mistakenly assumed that the disaster socialism wrought everywhere else would somehow make an exception for health-care.

Unfortunately economic realities don’t care about being fashionable, thought “compassionate”, or spoken highly of by anchors and editors. Britain’s universal health system was and is a failure in all categories except equality. The damage has been spread rather equally.

Yet some still think themselves more clever than the sum of human history. They include our local state senator Bob Wirch as well as all Democratic Presidential frontrunners.

I recently watched State Senators Wirch and Jim Erpenbach try selling their $15 billion Healthy Wisconsin plan to a Gateway audience. They gradually conceded more problems with their plan. For instance they acknowledged that big business would benefit greatly from Healthy Wisconsin while small businesses would hurt the most.

They also admitted that healthy people would be most penalized while the unhealthy would benefit the most. So for the record we have Bob Wirch advocating a competitive disadvantage for small business and lowered incentives for healthy choices. It’s a wonder that didn’t make his talking points.

Now while their plan for Wisconsin isn’t textbook socialism, it’s a huge step in that direction. Proposals on the national level though go the whole way. So how does socialized medicine match up anyway?

I’ll start off by assuming that you’ve all heard much about our “uninsured” and statistics placing the U.S. behind so many countries in life expectancy, infant mortality, etc.. They’re true, but only half of the story.

Firstly, while they exist, specifics about the uninsured are wildly exaggerated. Over 17 million of the uninsured live in households with above-average incomes. Many, like myself some years ago, simply weigh the risks and decide to chance it. Even then 45% of all uninsured at any time become insured within four months. As for life expectancy, if you were to adjust for our sky high rates of “fatal injury” (suicide, auto-deaths, and murder) our life expectancy standings greatly improve. This even leaves aside our astronomical rate of obesity related deaths for which our healthcare system bears little or no responsibility.

The superiority of our health care is best illustrated by noting survivability rates of illnesses. For instance my father is a cancer survivor. Considering the US has the highest cancer survivability rate in the western world, how would you begin convincing me to scrap our system.

Over 64% of all cancer patients in the US survive more than five years. In the UK under “universal” healthcare less than 50% survive. They largely die waiting their turn.

That’s not an exaggeration, but simple economics. Artificially lower the cost of a service and you’ll get shortages, which in health care terms translates to waiting lists. I urge every open minded person to visit www.waittimes.net (Ontario’s official health ministry site) to get a feel for just how long you’ll wait for care in a “universal” system. People simply use more when costs are indirect. Like any bureaucracy socialized systems are also terrible at translating priorities. For instance, since 1987 all of Canada (pop. 26 million) spent less money on hospital improvements than the city of Washington D.C. (pop. 618,000). And the state of Washington now has more MRIs than all of Canada. Not surprisingly the average wait for an MRI in Canada last year was over ten weeks. Here it’s a matter of days. We pay more and get more. When getting more means life or death that’s a good deal.

Still though costs could be lower in the U.S.. Back in 1940 only 10% of Americans had health insurance yet we lived to tell. What’s changed? The government got involved that’s what.

Today government directly pays for 45% of all health-care spending. That’s 45% of people who don’t shop around and 45% of the health-care industry that doesn’t need to compete. College tuition costs have risen similarly since the government got involved with student loans.

In our misguided quest for arbitrary equality via government we’ve caused all kinds of havoc. In the end if it’s equality you want the best way to achieve it is through raising others up rather than bringing everybody else down. But unfortunately envy of the successful is as much an animating factor for liberals/progressives as concern for the poor will ever be.

For those of you who are truly concerned with raising people out of poverty, then census data for the 90’s should be instructive. The ten lowest taxed states saw a greater than 10% average reduction in their poverty rates during the 90’s. The ten states with the highest taxes saw more than a 7% average increase in their poverty rates. Taxes hold the poor down and create a disincentive to ingenuity and therefore competition. Government out = prosperity in.

Considering that the $15 billion dollar tax hike for Healthy Wisconsin would make Wisconsin far and away the highest taxed state in the nation let’s hope Bob Wirch is taking note.