If “fake news” is rampant, What Made U.S. Health Care So Vulnerable to Covid-19, written by Bloomberg’s Danielle Parnass and Adam Schank, is prosecution exhibit #1. Take a look at the first question and answer:
1. How is U.S. health care different?
Government involvement in health care goes against the libertarian streak that distinguishes the U.S. from, say, the U.K. and Canada, whose state-funded health systems guaranteeing care for all are derided by some Americans as “socialized medicine.” Only about 36% of Americans, mainly the elderly and poor, receive health-care coverage through the government, via the Medicare and Medicaid programs. More than half of Americans have health insurance as a benefit through work (and can lose coverage if laid off). The 2010 Affordable Care Act, more commonly called Obamacare, has helped about 20 million Americans get health coverage by expanding access to Medicaid and subsidizing purchases of individual plans. Still, as of 2018, about 9% of the population, or 28.3 million people, had no health insurance.
It’s amazing how many falsehoods and misrepresentations can be crammed into one paragraph.
What “libertarian streak” remains in American healthcare? 90% of healthcare spending comes from government or heavily government regulated “private” health insurance companies which are essentially extensions of government bureaucracies.
“State-funded health systems [like] the U.K. and Canada guaranteeing care for all” [?], Parnass and Schank say, “are derided by some Americans as ‘socialized medicine.’” Well, they are socialized medicine—individuals are forced into the government program with little or no choice to fulfill some collective goal; subordination of the individual to the group is socialism. Healthcare provided by government central planners through taxation, spending, and regulation is the very definition of socialized medicine. Not calling them socialized medicine will not make it not socialized medicine. In fact, government funding doesn’t guarantee healthcare. It guarantees payment. Payment and access are not the same thing.
And why do “More than half of Americans have health insurance as a benefit through work (and can lose coverage if laid off)?” Because of government policies. The same policies don’t apply to other types of insurance, such as homeowners, auto, and life, so you don’t lose coverage if you’re laid off. The individual, not the employer, owns these other types of insurance policies.
But all of that is in large part irrelevant. From the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, governments everywhere took control of the response, and the United states was, and is, no different. The differing levels of success to managing the response to the pandemic relates to government policies, not the respective healthcare systems. And in America, governments at all levels took complete control, right up to and including forcing crippling economic lockdowns and supplying personal protective equipment, and botched up massively. States of Emergence were declared, and President Donald Trump activated the Defense Production Act for added power over the economy.
The private sector was the bright spot, even though stymied by regulations--many of which state and federal governments had to rescind or abolish policies to allow private producers to proceed. Parness and Schank indirectly acknowledge that, saying “the U.S. [is] a leader in many aspects of medicine, [has] long been at the forefront of research and . . . has access to state-of-the-art procedures.” That research leadership is the great benefactor of all of the socialized systems of the world. The American healthcare system, led by the still relatively free private business sector, has once again lived up to that billing.
Statists can’t wait for any excuse, no matter how outlandish, to blame the remnants of individual liberty for every problem caused by the government. Shame on Danielle Parnass and Adam Schank, and Bloomberg, for this piece of distortion and evasion.
Related Reading:
The Pandemic Is a Reminder That Many Regulations Are Both Costly and Unnecessary by PETER SUDERMAN for Reason
It took a crisis for policymakers to see that hundreds of rules were not worth the burdens they imposed.
Does New Jersey’s New Contact Tracing Initiative Expose Catastrophic Failure of Government?
We Can Protect Liberty While Combating Pandemics by BEN BAYER for The Orange County Register and New Ideal
America can do better, but only if we understand what it means for the ideal of freedom to serve as a beacon guiding government’s actions. It does not mean trivializing the threat of infectious disease or inaction in the face of it.
Why Sweden Succeeded in “Flattening the Curve” and New York Failed by Jon Miltimore for FEE
The reason New York failed to "flatten the curve" and Sweden succeeded probably has little to do with lockdowns.
For Better Health, Find a Cure for Government by J.D. TUCCILLE for Reason
In a time of health crisis, government has proven to be a crippling underlying condition.
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