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Tenn Care, Tenn Cost
Instapundit linked up this Opinion Journal article (free reg req., blah blah blah) that takes a look at every techno-liberal's ideal model of government-managed health care, ten years on:
In 1994, Tennessee passed what was then a very hot New Democrat idea--call it government managed care--a version of the reform the former first lady was also pitching nationwide. TennCare promised the impossible dream of politicians everywhere: Lower health-care costs while covering more of the "uninsured." They got the impossible, all right. After 10 years of mismanagement and lawsuits, TennCare now eats up one-third of the state's entire budget and is growing fast. Governor Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, is preparing to pull the plug and return the state to the less lunatic subsidies of Medicaid.
Once more, with feeling: government-managed health care does not work. It saddles an entire nation with a health care system as efficient as the post office and as caring as the IRS. Citizens of other nations who "brag" about their system are either to young to have used it or are too dumb to read the papers.
Does the current system we have work? Nope. It's too expensive, riddled with lawsuits, inconsistent, and sometimes just plain mean. That doesn't mean government will be the one to save us. Far from it. Don't fund entitlements, work on incentives. Help the folks help themselves, and then make sure leeching lawyers can't suck the whole thing dry for the many on behalf of the few.
I find it deeply troubling that people make a profit on the sick. Unfortunately I can't think of a better way to ensure they get well. Neither have you.
Liberals rejected the Clinton health plan as the corporatist, centrist, compromised glop their contradictory friends (health care advocates and the insurance industry, for two) made it...the Clintons were "liberal" about the same way his dallying with an employee was '60s-ish. _That_ rather owed much more to accepted executive norms that were well-known in the '20s, probably the 1620s.
Most liberals I know want something like the Canadian system: not absolutely government-controlled, not completely ad marketum, far from perfect but a great 90/10 solution (get poor people with colds to the doctors sooner, you get a lot fewer unreimbursed pneumonia hospitalisations). Yup, some Canadians go to the U.S. to avoid their own country's queue, but they wouldn't die if they didn't....
As for lawsuits, I find it funny when the sort who say, "You don't need laws to cover that, go to court and sue if there's actual provable damage," start to limit ways you can go to court.
Posted by: Mikhael Valentinus Smith on April 11, 2005 01:55 AM