So we’re going to have national health care, hey that’s great. Right? Well, actually that’s wrong. Lets face it, the only thing this government is good at is spending money. Not spending it wisely, just spending it. If you have been paying attention to the debate you know that what we can expect long waits, diminished quality, denial of care and a profound shortage of qualified medical professionals. That’s socialism for you. Anytime incentive is removed expect accomplishments to decline as well.
There is however a factor to this that I have not heard discussed. Whenever something is “guarantied” the incentive for the individual to strive is removed. That is one of the reasons that unions are a bad idea. If I must earn my job every day in order to keep it I am more likely to move towards excellence. If on the other hand my union has made it almost impossible for my employer to fire me and I know that minimal effort will benefit me as much as the maximum will then I am more likely to just coast through my day.
How does this relate to health care? We love professionals. When my computer is not working well I take it to my computer guy. He does whatever it is that he does to it and presto, it works like new again. Then I ask my foolish question. What was wrong with it? He answers, at least I think he answers although I don’t actually understand a thing he is saying. I think he is a magician, he took my sick friend and waved his magic wand over it, uttered those arcane words that only computer geeks know and bang, it’s fixed.
I don’t understand computers or cell phones or even microwaves for that matter. I also don’t understand how my body works. I use my body everyday and it seems to work fine and I know that, should it fail me in any way, I can take it to may local practitioner of that divine art of healing and “presto” it will work just like new again.
Well it ain’t so. Recently my father has suffered from a series of mental lapses and when this happens, it’s off to the doctors we go. His average stay is about a week while they use every test known to medical science. After all this they proclaim “we don’t know happened but he seems fine now.” So we go home and wait for it to happen again.
We now have more knowledge in the medical field than at any other time in our history. But we still have a long way to go for a complete knowledge of what makes this machine work and how to fix it when something goes wrong.
It is this misconception that will cause the problem. I expect that if we have national health care the general health of the population will suffer. When I know that I’m looking at a huge medical bill to fix problems I’ll try to avoid it. But if I know that I can go have the consequences of my misdeeds corrected for free, I will be less likely to take proper care of myself.
