Like a broken record:
Three years ago, Massachusetts enacted perhaps the boldest state health care experiment in American history, bringing near-universal coverage to the commonwealth with Paul Revere speed.
To make it happen, Democratic lawmakers and Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican, made an expedient choice, deferring until another day any serious effort to control the state’s runaway health costs.
The day of reckoning has arrived. Threatened first by rapid early enrollment in its new subsidized insurance program and now by a withering economy, the state’s pioneering overhaul has entered a second, more challenging phase.
Thanks to new taxes and fees imposed last year, the health plan’s jittery finances have stabilized for the moment. But government and industry officials agree that the plan will not be sustainable over the next 5 to 10 years if they do not take significant steps to arrest the growth of health spending.
“Arrest the growth of health spending” means “health care rationing” – it is always the result of socialized medicine. When you undertake to promise everyone a thing, everyone will want that thing, and want it really well done. If you are offering people whatever free car they desire, how many people are going to choose the Kia and how many the BMW? As you don’t have an endless supply of BMWs, you’re eventually going to have to work out a system where some people get BMWs, and some get Kias…and as the guy who writes your budget wants a BMW, I think you can see what goes into which parking lot.
There are only so many doctors out there, and among doctors only so many who have a particular specialty. There is only so much money in the budget for overhead, and the budget director can buy another ultra-sound machine, or give a pay raise to the workers whose union is pestering him day in and day out for a raise. Meanwhile, seeing as a doctor or nurse gets paid the same whether they see one or ten patients a day, there’s really no incentive to squeeze that extra appointment in.
And so – you get waiting lists, substandard care, uncaring service providers and bloated administrative budgets, and a lot of people don’t get the care they need because if everyone who needed a kidney transplant got one, it’d bust the budget, even if there were enough staff and equipment to meet the need. But liberals consider this fair – especially liberal leaders, who are sure to set up the system so that they and their families and friends are very well treated by the health care system (in nations with socialized medicine, can any of you out there really imagine the local Prime Minister or even junior legislative back-bencher waiting in line with the unwashed masses for health care?).
Obama now wants to bring this thing nationwide – and he may very well have the votes to carry it through Congress. If we does, we’ll all have health care – if we don’t die before our turn in line comes up.
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