Posted by
Andrews on Monday, December 21, 2009 4:56:38 PM
Well, having failed to properly call the health care vote, let me make a safer prediction, we aren't going to get fully socialized medicien, at least not at first. Thanks to the last minute, horse-trading bill that made it through, our new Carter is following in the footsteps of our last Carter. That Carter wanted to socialize energy and education and instead had to settle for a defective Department of Education and a worthless Energy Department. Neither accomplished the degree of socialism Carter wanted, instead they were simply impediments to any effort at local reform, sucking huge quantities of tax dollars and introducing tremendous inefficiency at the federal level.
So, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your desires, I doubt we will see the full blown socialism many wanted (on the left for philosophical reasons, on the right as an abject lesson) and instead we will see a simple decline in the quality of health care, a massive expenditure and a decline in the quality of those willing to practice medicine. In short, expect Obama to do for health care what Carter's Department of Ed did for public schools over the last 30 years.
If that doesn't frighten you, I don't know what will.
POSTSCRIPT
Actually, the worst effect will be that the decline in health care will not be as evidently the fault of government as the decline in schools is. As public schools are government agencies, everyone knows who to blame. Despite efforts to blame rich people abandoning public schools for private schools, unfair tax schemes, and parental apathy, the bulk of the public blames the government for bad public schools. But, as doctors and hospitals will remain nominally private, I fully expect the decline over the coming decades to be blamed on the free market, just as most ills are. ("
How To Blame the Free Market", "
The Endless Cycle of Intervention"). As a result, expect in a decade or two a repeat of this issue with even more explicitly socialist "solutions" proposed.