That’s the point Andrew Langer makes in this column. The notion behind Obamacare is that all Americans will get good medical care when they need it by making sure that everyone has insurance. The problem is that insurance does you no good if the underlying service is unavailable or of poor quality. There is abundant evidence that the unintended consequences of federalizing the market for medical care will drive down the availability of doctors and their ability to give good treatment.
Lenin promised the Russians that under communism, hunger would be a thing of the past, but by putting food production under the control of the state, output plunged. Would the Russians have been any better off if Lenin’s government had issued them insurance policies entitling them to food?
