Health Care Socialism Cont’d

While not receiving as many front page headlines as it did this summer and fall, the health care debate continues to rage in Washington. Recently, for starters, numbers showing the modest profits of health insurers became widespread in the media. This is a good thing, because the more educated the American people become on health care, the more likely they are to be concerned about government as a panacea for health care.

Of course, there are still those out there for whom government is the cure-all. Terry Schleder and Emil Shaw recently wrote an article on health care on behalf of the New Mexico Alliance for Retired Americans. Judging from their article which can be accessed here, the organization (or at least the perspective of the authors) is well to the left of AARP and just to the right of Mao.

Their arguments are summarized as follows:
1) Medicare is great (ignore those trillion dollar unfunded liabilities);
2) Health care is a human right (regardless of who is forced to provide it to us);
3) “Quasi-privatized” Medicaid and “parasitic” Medicare Advantage programs are evil (this despite the fact that as government programs, both are far from resembling anything oriented towards the free market);

So, that’s the basic left-wing point of view here in New Mexico. Never mind the concept of unlimited wants and limited resources. The health care fairy (government) knows what is best and will provide everything for everyone. No tradeoffs required except getting rid of those nasty businesses involved in health care.

On that note, check out NTU’s recent letter to MoveOn demanding a “public option” for all areas of the economy, not just health care.