Socialized Health Care in the USA

[kandrathe]

Weren't you arguing not some minutes ago that the state does have a role in doing exactly that, providing for those who are poor ("less productive") and infirm? Or have we now moved past that socialist heresy to the true gospel of social Darwinism?

No.

Yes, I'm libertarian, but not to the illogical level that begets "social darwinism". There is no ideal solution, and we need to acknowledge that there are people in our society who are too young, or too infirm to provide for themselves. In my way of thinking, that is not some magical age where suddenly your limbs fall off and you become a ward of the state. Just as with drugs, I can recognize the malevolent effect they have on the society, yet I can reject criminalizing drug use as a remedy (as Lisbon has discovered). I'm advocating systems that encourage, or require personal responsibility for ones own problems when that person is capable of resolving their own issues. This type of social care would typically find a slim number of people (<10%) who cannot care for themselves, and require the rest of society to come to their aid (dependency support ratio of 9 to 1). There is the ages old argument of children, versus elderly, but the fact is that dependent children are much, much, cheaper than the elderly, and the extremely elderly. That is, unless we return to the days when parents move back in with their children, and begin to consume much less health care.<blockquote>"Absent a sizable increase in labor force participation, the demographic transition
we are about to undergo in this country will require a reduction in per capita consumption
relative to what it could have been in the absence of demographic change. Given this
basic fact, the main macroeconomic policy questions for the nation are (1) How much
can we (and should we) raise labor force participation? and (2) How do we want to
allocate the burden of reduced consumption over time?"<!--fontc--><!--/fontc--> (source) </blockquote> Each of us must attempt to carry our own load, and a little extra for those of us who due to circumstances of birth, or disease, or accident become unable to care for themselves. If each of us who are healthy did all they could to prepare themselves for the day that they may become unable to continue to provide for themselves, then I think each of us would be content that it was fair. This is a concept of social benevolence we can all accept. In fact, if we talked about HCSA, and that unspent money at the time of your demise went to a general fund, then I believe that too would be acceptable to most.

The US already has a single payer system, reserved for the "elderly" based on that magical age. It consumes about 20% of the Federal Budget, exceeds the amount spend on Defense and will exceed the size of SSI in the next few years. Within the next decade, SSI, Medicaid, and Medicare will consume over 50% of the Federal budget. Our government has been so very irresponsible with every one of its social programs with them all running bankrupt requiring massive borrowing to sustain. Why would we ever trust the US government with running something as massive as a health care system?

Socialism is the promise of prosperity, equality, and security with the result of equality only in poverty, suffering, and tyranny. We only need to look at our current Ponzi scheme to see why the continued path of borrowing to pay for services today will have catastrophic results at some time in the future. Perhaps you believe in that fantasy that the debt never has to be repaid, but I believe that we are reaching that point where continued borrowing will destroy our GDP, and thus our ability to ever pay down that debt. When you run a personal budget, you know you are in trouble when you need to borrow money to pay for every day expenses, like groceries. That is what the US government is doing, they are borrowing money not for the extraordinary events, but to run the every day, year on year expenses.