Hillarycare is sickening for the US

Senator Clinton's plan is to use a federal mandate to force every American to buy health insurance. The government will regulate health care, define acceptable health insurance and force every American to buy a plan based on the government established standard. When asked how purchase can be enforced, she told ABC's George Stephanopolous, "we will have an enforcement mechanism . . . you know, going after people's wages."

Indeed, we have a problem in the delivery of health care in our country, says columnist Star Parker. But if we want cheaper and more creatively delivered health care we need less, not more, government.

According to Dr. David Gratzer of the Manhattan Institute:
 

• About half of health care expenditures in 1960 were directly controlled by consumers; today, it's about 15 per cent.
   
• Over the same period in which consumers have relinquished control, per capita health care spending has quintupled.
  
  Beyond the pure economic calculus lies the moral question of individual responsibility and freedom, says Parker. Our health care ills are symptomatic of our social ills. And our social ills reflect a society where the link between personal responsibilities and costs and personal rights and benefits has been largely severed.
  
  Soviet-style mandates like Clinton's would simply dig the hole into which we are sinking deeper. More individual freedom, choice, and responsibility in both the delivery and purchase of health care are our only hope, says Parker.
  
  Source: Star Parker, HillaryCare's sickening for our national soul, Boston Herald, February 11, 2008.
  
  For text: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/op_ed/view.bg?articleid=1072727&srvc=rss
  
  For more on Health Issues: http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_Category=16
  
  FMF Policy Bulletin/ 19 February 2008
  
  SA Note: SA’s Department of Health (DOH) has something similar to Hilarycare in mind, with the difference being that it envisages a much higher percentage of healthcare being delivered by government hospitals and clinics, paid for by medical fund contributions. For many years the DOH has been eyeing the amount of money people voluntarily contribute to medical schemes to pay for their own health care, calling it part of “SA’s health spend” and thinking of ways and means to take the contributions and spread them over the rest of the population. The idea has some significant flaws: first, the money belongs to the contributors and government should not attempt to appropriate any part of it. Second, the contributors to medical schemes are already, through their taxes, paying a substantial part of the cost of medical care provided by the DOH to the poor. Third, arbitrary appropriation of property for gratis transfer to others does no favours to either party; those who lose their property quit because they have no incentive to produce for others to loot from them, and the recipients of looted property have no incentive to become self-supporting because if they earn too much they no longer share in the loot. Fourth, a much larger percentage of the population than claimed by the DOH receive health care from private providers, while the DOH provides health care to a much smaller percentage of the population that it claims: the true figures could be as close as a 50/50 split on health care services actually delivered. FMFed