Health Care Reform

One of the most audacious attempts to take away our freedom to live our lives as we see fit has been the so-called "health care reform" bills that were being rushed through Congress before either the public or the members of Congress themselves had a chance to discover all that was in them.

For this, we were taught to resent doctors, insurance companies and even people with "Cadillac health insurance plans," who were to be singled out for special taxes. Meanwhile, our freedom to make our own medical decisions - on which life and death can depend - was to be quietly taken from us and transferred to our betters in Washington.

— Thomas Sowell; Dismantling America

Ironically, the United States is moving in the direction of the kind of economy that China has been forced to move away from. China once had complete government control of medical care, but eventually gave it up as the disaster that it was.

— Thomas Sowell; Dismantling America

People who believe in "universal health care" show remarkably little interest - usually none - in finding out what that phrase turns out to mean in practice, in those countries where it already exists, such as Britain, Sweden or Canada.

For one thing, "universal health care" in these countries means months of waiting for surgery that Americans get in a matter of weeks or even days.

In these and other countries, it means having only a fraction as many MRIs and other high-tech medical devices available per person as in the United States.

In Sweden, it means not only having bureaucrats deciding what medicines the government will and will not pay for, but even preventing you from buying the more expensive medicine for yourself with your own money. That would violate the "equality" that is the magic mantra.

— Thomas Sowell; Dismantling America

Americans tend to be more obese, consume more drugs and have more homicides. None of that is going to change with "universal health care" because it isn't health care. It is medical care.

When it comes to things where medical care itself makes the biggest difference - cancer survival rates, for example - Americans do much better than people in most other countries.

No one who compares medical care in this country with medical care in other countries is likely to want to switch. But those who cannot be bothered with the facts may help destroy the best medical care in the world by pursuing a political mirage.

— Thomas Sowell; Dismantling America

One of the strongest talking points of those who want a government-run medical care system is that we simply cannot afford the high and rising costs of medical care under the current system.

First of all, what we can afford has absolutely nothing to do with the cost of producing anything. We will either pay those costs or not get the benefits. Moreover, if we cannot afford the quantity and quality of medical care that we want now, the government has no miraculous way of enabling us to afford it in the future.

If you think the government can lower medical costs by eliminating "waste, fraud and abuse," as some Washington politicians claim, the logical question is: Why haven't they done that already?

Over the years, scandal after scandal has shown waste, fraud and abuse to be rampant in Medicare and Medicaid. Why would anyone imagine that a new government medical program will do what existing government medical programs have clearly failed to do?

— Thomas Sowell; Dismantling America

The "uninsured" are another big talking point for government medical insurance. But the incomes of many of the uninsured indicate that many— if not most— of them choose to be uninsured. Poor people can get insurance through Medicaid.

— Thomas Sowell; Dismantling America