by A.W. Berry

Created on: May 23, 2007   Last Updated: January 23, 2012

Universal Health Care likely means lower and slower quality of health care services, increases in taxes, bureaucracy, and unnecessary government spending. A Los Angeles Times article entitled 'Universal healthcare's dirty little secrets' illustrates these points. It is a lack of faith in the ability of American citizens to make informed decisions for themselves in addition to an unconsidered write off of any private/public hyrbrid health care solution and the principles of capitalism in and of itself.

"So what is potentially fiscally functional solution?" you may ask. Government can regulate what isn't in its control, it has done this before with anti-trust, federal approval of drugs, federal oversight of building code etc. The Government does not have to have absolute control of health care to assist in a solution. Possible solutions include, cost caps, legalized private insurance, co-op insurance, partially subsidized insurance, federal investment insurance and so on. The amount of solutions are as many as a creative bureaucrat can think of.

To illustrate further, think of a small community of around 100 people. 2 within the community are doctors. Let's assume the average income is 30k and the tax increase is 10 percent or $3000/year. Even if the tax increase were only 5 percent that would be $1500 or $125/month per person. Incidentally that could get you fairly decent private insurance. Given there would be a tax increase of 5-10% does it make more sense to have more or less control of one's health care? If one pays the taxes, the Government decides for you, if you pay for private insurance you decide.

The next point in this opposition to universal health care is in regard to high hospital bills and ever increasing private medical costs. This is clearly and issue and has the potential to wipe out many families savings. It does not mean a thoughtful fiscally conservative solution to the problem does not exist, and it is unreasonable to assume that such a solution does not exist.

Economically, the healthier a nation is, the less health insurance individuals should need. This being the case the Government may be better off spending 1 percent of taxes to promote healthier lifestyle than 5 percent fixing the problems created by poor lifestyle choices. Even if only 25 percent of the population becomes healthier from a healthy living campaign that's a net savings of 10 percent off the 5 percent of taxes since only 1 percent was spent and 25 percent of 5 percent

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