Health Care

“Hurry Up and Die”: The Inescapable Outcome of Socialized Medicine

by Michael Tennant February 4, 2013

Japan’s “universal” health-care system, like all such systems the world over, is in trouble, with costs rising and the population aging. Nearly 25 percent of Japanese are over the age of 60, a proportion expected to increase to 40 percent over the next 50 years. Since the old generally require more — and more expensive — medical treatment than ...

Death and the National Health Service

by Scott McPherson January 7, 2013

“I’ve seen the future, baby: it is murder.” — Leonard Cohen, “The Future” The British are so proud of their National Health Service. Hospitals are falling apart and have become a breeding ground for staph infections; waiting lists and the rationing of care are the norm, and “new medical technologies” has become an oxymoron. But to hear them ...

Obamacare’s Other Achilles Heel

by Wendy McElroy January 4, 2013

With the media obsessing about the fiscal cliff, many people may not have noticed that net American taxes for the next decade just rose by around $1 trillion. That’s the cost of the first phase of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare. Much of the increase will be borne by the average working person. The watchdog ...

Medicare Is Doomed

by Sheldon Richman November 1, 2012

When Democrats accuse Republicans of wanting to “end Medicare as we know it,” they are right. Of course ending Medicare as we know it is not the same as ending Medicare. What Democrats fail to point out is that “Medicare as we know it” is no longer an option for anyone. They too will end “Medicare as we know ...

Medicare Is Doomed

by Sheldon Richman September 3, 2012

When Democrats accuse Republicans of wanting to “end Medicare as we know it,” they are right. But Democrats do too. “Medicare as we know it” is no longer an option. Leaving aside Medicare’s fatal moral defect — that it’s coercively funded — the program is doomed. It has tens of trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities. It threatens working generations ...

The Supreme Court’s Word Game Saves Obamacare

by Sheldon Richman September 1, 2012

The Supreme Court decision upholding the health-insurance mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) had a distinct Alice-in-Wonderland feel to it. As Lewis Carroll wrote in Through the Looking-Glass, “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” Chief Justice ...

Sick Economics

by Laurence M. Vance August 14, 2012

Second only to their salary, all employees love and depend on their fringe benefits. Fringe benefits can take the form of paid time-off for breaks, vacations, jury duty, personal reasons, maternity leave, or illness. They can be in the form of discounted or fully paid insurance for health, life, or disability. Participation in a pension or retirement program is a ...

Big Pharma and Crony Capitalism

by Wendy McElroy July 9, 2012

A friend just experienced a terrible drug problem. Not with illegal drugs, but with a prescription from her doctor. Her eighty-year-old memory sometimes stumbles, and so, without diagnostic tests, the doctor prescribed a potent Alzheimer medication. Within a week, I received phone calls from her about two men and a woman who were breaking into her house repeatedly despite carefully ...

Socialized Medicine Is Here to Stay

by Laurence M. Vance July 3, 2012

The Supreme Court heard 65 cases this term, but waited until the very end of the term to issue its ruling in the case regarding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, more popularly known as Obamacare. The main issue was the constitutionality of the “individual mandate” that every American not covered by Medicaid, Medicare, or health insurance must purchase ...

The Big Health-Care CON

by Michael Tennant June 28, 2012

For decades governments have been passing laws and regulations with the stated goal of bringing down health-care costs. For just as long libertarians have been pointing out that government policies such as Medicare, Medicaid, physician licensing, pharmaceutical regulations, and insurance mandates are at the root of the problem and that every attempt to fix the problem without addressing those ...

Will Supreme Court’s Ignorance Torpedo Americans’ Freedom?

by James Bovard June 21, 2012

Americans have never had reliable protection against the ignorance of the Supreme Court. During the past 80 years, Supreme Court justices have routinely rubber-stamped government policies that they grossly failed to understand. Black-robed economic illiteracy is perhaps the Obama administration’s best hope in the Court’s pending decision on the constitutionality of Obamacare. At the oral arguments in late March, neither ...

Britain’s “Fat and Fags” Health Policy

by Wendy McElroy May 8, 2012

A terrible term has entered the healthcare debate now raging in Britain: “lifestyle rationing.” Given the predictability with which social trends cross the Atlantic, and given a looming Obamacare, Americans would be wise to eavesdrop closely on this conversation. “Lifestyle rationing” refers to denying medical care to those who make unhealthy lifestyle choices, such as smoking and becoming obese. At ...