Californians Should Reject Socialist Medicine as Immoral

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger deserves praise for his intent to veto the California Health Reliability Act, which would eliminate private medical insurance and establish a state-run health insurance system. Californians should get informed about the disastrous results of Canada’s decades-long experiment with socialist medicine: long waiting lists and wait times for specialized services, conveyor-belt treatment for routine services, chronic shortages of family doctors and hospital beds, gross inefficiencies, slow innovation, stifling and wasteful bureaucracies, warring “special-interest” groups, and the exodus of good doctors to greener, freer pastures. There have been increasing accounts of Canadians suffering severe pain and even dying while waiting months or years for treatments that are readily available in countries that allow private healthcare.

The moral code underlying Canada’s healthcare system can be inferred from how it is practiced. Everyone has free and equal access to healthcare providers, which naturally generates a lot of demand. Providers bill the government for services rendered. Government pays providers with the money it extorts via highly progressive taxation. Government has the power to restrict healthcare spending, which logically leads to long waiting lists and wait times.

The basic moral principle is egalitarianism—the belief that everyone must be given equal rewards regardless of performance or behavior. Everyone gets equal access to healthcare regardless of what they pay in taxes. And what one pays is independent of how much one uses the system. Egalitarianism is a species of altruism, the moral code which advocates self-sacrifice to others.

For healthcare consumers, the egalitarian message is obvious. Don’t bother working hard to achieve success for you will only be condemned as “the haves,” taxed of your “excess,” prevented from securing better healthcare, and told to go to the back of the line. Don’t bother being responsible regarding your health because it won’t affect what you pay in taxes or what services you get “for free.” Imagine the impact on a hard-working teenager if his parents seized his earnings from a part-time job and distributed it—in the name of equality—among his ambitionless siblings.

As for health-care providers, the egalitarian message is also obvious. Study hard for years; work long and grueling hours; develop life-saving skills, but government will dictate your employer and compensation. The public demands high-quality services regardless of the extent to which your freedom and interests are being sacrificed to the “public good”—to hell with individual rights.

Form this one can extract the egalitarian notion of justice: Punish those who are creative, productive and responsible in order to reward those who (for whatever reason) are not. But if justice is the policy of granting to each person what he or she deserves, then egalitarianism is unjust. The champions of egalitarianism seem oblivious to what makes wealth and medical technology possible. They want us to believe that they can punish and enslave achievers and still have piles of money to seize and distribute—that high-quality services and technological advances are possible in a society where those who are ambitious and productive are sacrificed in the name of helping those who are not.

Given this moral code of egalitarianism, it’s not surprising that Canada’s healthcare system is so impractical.

Now consider today’s wonderful trend of being offered higher quality computer products and services at ever lower prices, and what would happen if governments seized control and established a government-controlled monopoly offering free computing to all. What would happen to the computer innovators, product/service quality, real costs and government debt? Pretty much what has happened with the Canadian healthcare system.

Why is it immoral to personally benefit from one’s own success? Surely, someone’s computer innovation or breakthrough medical discovery is not stolen from those who didn’t innovate. The aspirations and abilities of people vary immensely, and they expect to be, and should be, rewarded accordingly for their efforts and achievements. An opposite policy—an egalitarian policy—destroys the motivation to innovate and succeed.

Or consider socialist medicine from a somewhat different angle. When government has the power to extort money from people to pay for government services such as healthcare, the providers become directly responsible to bureaucrats, politicians and “special-interest” groups—not to patients. When the patient retains the power to financially reward providers for good service, providers will compete for the money by offering better quality at lower prices, which is what we get in the relatively unregulated computer industry.

There is no rational argument in favor of socialist medicine. Californians and other Americans should be wary when their left-leaning politicians try to glorify the Canadian healthcare system or any other socialistic scheme.

Glenn Woiceshyn is President of Powerful Minds Inc., a Calgary-based firm that develops curriculum materials for K-9 education. (www.powerfulminds.org; mail@powerfulminds.org)