Mark Steyn explains it well in the latest National Review:
Americans have convinced themselves that they ? or, at any rate, their uninsured neighbors ? urgently need the magic Euro-cure-all. If they get it, it will improve their health not a wit.
But it will make a lot of other things worse. Government-directed health care is a profound assault on the concept of citizenship. It deforms national politics very quickly, and ensures that henceforth elections will always be fought on the Left?s terms. I find it hard to believe President Obama and his chums haven?t looked at Canada and Europe and concluded that health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture. He doesn?t say that, of course. He says his objective is to ?control costs.? Which is the one thing that won?t happen. Even now, health-care costs rise faster under Medicare than in the private sector.
By the way, to accept that argument is to concede a lot of the turf: Why is the cost of my health care Barack Obama?s business? When he mused recently about whether his dying grandmother had really needed her hip replacement, he gave the game away: Right now, if Gran?ma decides she doesn?t need the hip, that?s her business. Under a government system, it?s the state?s business ? and they have to ?allocate? ?resources,? and frankly at your age your body?s not worth allocating to. Why give you a new hip when you?re getting up there and you?re gonna be kicking the bucket in a year or two or five or twenty?
Sally Pipes discussed this problem in the clip below.
