A Stitch in Haste

In yesterday’s New York Times, Paul Krugman does what he does best: lie about socialized medicine —

The politics of guaranteed care are also easy, at least in one sense: if the Democrats do manage to establish a system of universal coverage, the nation will love it.

I know that’s not what everyone says; some pundits claim that the United States has a uniquely individualistic culture, and that Americans won’t accept any system that makes health care a collective responsibility. Those who say this, however, seem to forget that we already have a program — you may have heard of it — called Medicare. It’s a program that collects money from every worker’s paycheck and uses it to pay the medical bills of everyone 65 and older. And it’s immensely popular.

I could start by simply noting that Medicare isn’t particular popular among people who die at age 64 and whose beneficiaries get exactly zero from their breadwinner’s lifetime of Medicare taxes. One enduring truth about the dead: they don’t get to vote (except in Chicago).

But let’s gloss over that pesky detail as flippantly as Krugman does. Why, exactly, is it at all relevant that Medicare is “immensely popular”? After all, how could it be anything other than “immensely popular” given its nature: an entitlement program in which people (at least those who live long enough) tend to get more — often much more — out of it than they put in?

Getting goodies — whether it’s health care, education, bridges to nowhere or bubble gum — that you either didn’t pay for at all or at least obtained at a significant discount — is always bound to be “immensely popular.” (Cf., “stimulus checks.”)

Until the program goes bankrupt, of course. Compare and contrast: How “immensely popular” were those other public/private mutant monsters, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, just a few short years ago? How “immensely popular” are they today? They too were once “success stories” that “proved” that government bureaucrats could run a market as well as — indeed better and more “humanely” than — the market could run itself. Until they couldn’t — and then they became, somehow, a “market failure.” Forget that Fannie and Freddie are known as “government-sponsored entities.” It is, we are told, all capitalism’s fault. It is always, we are told, all capitalism’s fault.

So too with Medicare: So long as Grandma and Grandpa can continue to bleed their grandchildren dry (but with disingenuously clean consciences because “they paid into it”), Medicare will continue to be “immensely popular.” And when it begins to trip and stumble, apologists like Krugman will no doubt find a way to blame it on capitalism. Just you wait…

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Elsewhere, Krugman states:

For one thing, we know that it’s economically feasible: every wealthy country except the United States already has some form of guaranteed health care. The hazards Americans treat as facts of life — the risk of losing your insurance, the risk that you won’t be able to afford necessary care, the chance that you’ll be financially ruined by medical costs — would be considered unthinkable in any other advanced nation.

First and foremost — whose health care is “unthinkable“? That is a word Krugman and his ilk simply have no right to use. None. Zero.

Moving on: It bears repeating — “Health care” is not a homogeneous good. An annual physical is not an emergency appendectomy. There is simply no such thing as “guaranteed health care” for all — any more than there could be “guaranteed Park Avenue penthouses” for all. “Annual physicals for all” might be easy, but “everything for everyone” is a fiction.

(Heck, thanks to the irrational hatred of markets by people like Krugman, we don’t even have universal kidney coverage, let alone universal “health” coverage.)

“Health care,” especially when writ as naively large as Krugman would like, is a scarce good like any other. And like any other it must be rationed. There is no economy on earth, not even the “wealthy countries” and “advanced nations,” that can avoid it. (And, as we see time and time again, those “advanced nations” — like Britain, Canada and Australia — are not all that advanced after all.)

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Finally: On the subject of modern American health insurance, can we please stop the liberal nonsense of calling it a “private market” in the midst of a “market failure”? As I had to note elsewhere today:

A system where — due to schizophrenic tax laws that are a throwback to World War II wage and price controls — a person does not simply earn money and then turn around and buy insurance in a competitive market — is simply not a “market failure.” It is government failure, pure and simple. It is the government that has added this absurd layer of employer-provided health coverage that creates disconnects[.]

If your auto insurance company displeases you, you can switch it. If your homeowners insurance company displeases you, you can switch it. But you are stuck, thanks to the government, with only those health insurance options your employers negotiate for you.

Remind me again which insurance industries are “the free market” and which one isn’t?

Basic — not everything, but basic — health care for the incompetent and the indigent (i.e., Medicaid) as part of a classical liberal social safety net is one thing. Detached-from-reality promises that “everything for everyone” is not only possible, not only cheaper, but also inevitable (because “it’s immensely popular” and because “the market has failed”) shows that health care socialists like Krugman simply take neither the issue nor themselves seriously.

But at least on that front we can find common ground: Not taking Paul Krugman seriously is, to use his term, “immensely popular.”

Filed under: Economics & Finance, Socialized Medicine