Andy Caldwell
Sally Pipes, the CEO of the Pacific Research Institute, is one of America’s foremost experts on Obamacare and single-payer health care proposals. During a recent interview, she outlined the fatal flaws of the plans to offer “free” health care, which depend on taxing Wall Street and employers, the impacts of which will be felt on Main Street, USA.
The dirty little secret having to do with Medicare is that it only pays pennies on the dollar to health care providers. Doctors and hospitals make up the difference by charging private insurers more. Along these same lines, most Medicare patients can’t rely on Medicare alone to cover their insurance costs. They are forced to buy supplemental plans from private insurers. Hence, any proposal that seeks to outlaw private insurance means that the current Medicare system will then collapse under its own weight, because the only thing propping it up is private insurance.
Another fatal facet of the free health care plan comes by way of a simple equation. Unlimited demand plus limited supply equals rationing. Let’s break this down to a level that even a socialist can understand. When things are free, people will take all they can get. They become indiscriminate takers. The problem here is that we have a limited number of health care providers. They can’t possibly see or treat every single person who would demand their services. It is also a recipe for abuse, to wit, the people who currently show up in a hospital emergency room for the flu, knowing they won’t be refused service due to their inability to pay.
“Free” systems eventually have no choice but to ration. Of course, socialized health care systems around the world never admit that they are rationing. No, instead they inflict indeterminate wait times for appointments. In the meantime, some of the patients die, and many suffer. Look no further than America’s treatment of our veterans at the hands of the Veterans Administration for an example of this abuse.
With respect to taxing the bejesus out of Wall Street, let’s go back to the left’s first campaign against the “one-percenters” as they “Occupied Wall Street.” One would be hard-pressed to explain how the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) was one of the main organizers of the same. How so? SEIU is, for instance, the largest union representing Santa Barbara County employees. Those are the same employees whose pensions are dependent upon stock market returns from, you guessed it, Wall Street.
I am still waiting for a reporter to ask a union leader if they are willing to give up their Cadillac health care plan, while supporting a 70-90% tax on the investments that will fund their pension, in order to replace their plan with an inferior government health care plan. Can you imagine what that would do to the trillion-dollar public employee pension shortfall that exists right now?
How is it that anyone believes we can tax ourselves into prosperity? Taxation has the opposite effect of the multiplier effect on our economy. What’s worse, this level of taxation will lead to capital flight from America.
