Deadly Healthcare

You had me down, 21 to zip
Smile of Judas on your lip
--Robert Palmer

The Supreme Court is likely render its verdict on the constitutionality of Obamacare in the next few days. The Intrade contract currently reflects a near 80% chance that the Court will rule the individual mandate unconstitutional. Note that the odds almost doubled since the SC hearings, and have crept higher recently on the back of public snippets from Justices Ginsberg, Kennedy, Scalia, and perhaps others.

While we await, here is an interesting article from a Russian economist who worked on Gorbachev's staff. He highlights (lowlights) the progression (digression) of the Russian healthcare system after the Soviet Union declared 'universal' health care coverage for its people in 1918.

Sadly, while some of his examples are sickening, they were totally predictable once socialized medicine was put in motion. With certainty, we can forcase the following consequences of socialized medicine: Resources will be squandered, quality falls, costs rise.

Standard of living declines.

The author raises another interesting point. Today's comparisons to other systems rarely compare apples to apples. Typically, comparison appearing in the media constitute more propaganda than fact. For example, oft cited stats on higher infant deaths in the US rarely add the important footnote that the US metric is more inclusive than elsewhere.

In fact, governments operating socialized systems are more likely to distort their data to make their systems look better. The author recounts the USSR practice of discharging near death patients so that their expiry would not count as in-hospital deaths.

A couple years back, Sarah Palin observed socialized medicine in the US would result in 'death panels' that would determine who would have access to critical care. While her choice of words may have been unfortunate, her observation was nonetheless on the mark. Health care resources are scarce and must be 'economized.' In unhampered markets, price is the primary rationing mechanism.

Socialized systems have no pricing mechanism. Instead, panels of bureaucrats must decide what health care resources get produced and who gets them.

A natural outcome of this, as the author notes, is a multi-tiered system where those who can can curry political favor get better care than others. He notes examples from Russian, UK, French, and Canadian systems.

These multi-tiered systems that favor special interests have not made it into mainstream media discourse here in the US. There is little doubt as to why, as the biased media realizes that broad awareness of this method of rationing health care resources would turn public opinion even more strongly against Obamacare.

Let's hope that we don't have to experience the squalor first hand before recognizing the deadly (quite literally in this case) flaws associated with increasing the degree of socialization in our health care system.