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Universal Health Care, the new name for Socialized Medicine has become THE campaign theme for 2008.
Big business has long been behind it because it takes one of the major expenses FROM business and foists it ONTO the backs of ordinary taxpayers.
Currently slightly over 85% of Americans have health care insurance through their jobs, while about 15% do not.
So the natural question is, why shouldn't those in that 85% pay a little more in order to make sure everyone is covered?
But do we want the same people who run Motor Vehicles, the Post Office, the IRS and the VA hospital system (think Walter Reed) running our health care?
First, ANYTHING that will reduce the costs of doing business will help American industry and that is certainly a prime concern. Still, since about the middle of the last century, Canada and most of Western Europe have moved toward "socialized medicine," and they've been struggling, without much success, to live up to the promise of providing "free health insurance and quality health care for all."
Canada's and England's systems are wracked with rationing and restrictions on visits. In Canada, the average wait between a referral and a doctor's visit across the 12 specialtes, in the ten Provinces is almost 18 weeks!
20% of kidney dialysis centers in Europe and an astounding 50% in England don't accept people 65 years and older. In Ontario, a pateint can wait as long as sixteen months for an MRI scan.
What's more, many of the early adherants of socialized medicine have since backed away from it. Starting in 1989 England began introducing "market-based reforms into its health care system. Sweden introduced "managed competition" into its health care system in the early 1990s and New Zealand began offering its citizens tax incentives to purchase private insurance as an attempt to end its forty year stint with socialized medicine and Chile likewise has turned to giving its citizens financial incentives to move from its government run health care system to private insurers.
The problem today is that the die may already be cast. Big business wants out. In fact, all of American business wants out of funding health care, so whether it works well or not (and judging form the reults around the world the answer is not), we're probably going to see some form of government managed, or "Universal Health Care," with provisions for those willing and able to pay premiums for private insurance.
Ultimately we'll see some form of two-tiered system, with those able to pay for private insurance able to avoid the rationing and long waits that those fully dependent upon the government run program will have to deal with.
