Broken hearts lies all around me
And I don't see an easy way to get out of this
--Cutting Crew
Although it is tempting to say so, the US healthcare system is current not government controlled. Control implies ownership of property and decisions rights as to disposition of productive assets.
Currently, it is more accurate to say that, generally, the US health care system is under government influence. Influence implies capacity for swaying the property-related decisions of others in ways that would not occur in purely voluntary buying and selling relationships on the market.
It is also accurate to say that government influence in healthcare is significant and increasing. Although in motion earlier, trend trajectory increased in 1965 with the passage of the Medicare Act.
One of the easier prognostications in history was made by Ronald Reagan and others while the Medicare Act was still under development. As government influence in the healthcare system grows, RR et al posited, so will system bureaucracy. Healthcare system efficiency will decline.
This was an easy call because all one had to do was apply principles of socialism to the healthcare market.
At some point, of course, influence grows to the point where it becomes control. The prognostication associated with government control of the healthcare system is eventual chaos.
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If the human intellect is allowed to impose a preconceived pattern on society, if our powers of reasoning are allowed to lay claim to a monopoly of creative effort… then we must not be surprised if society, as such, ceases to function as a creative force.
~Friedrich Hayek, 1967
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