European Health Care: Economic Malpractice

By Hugh de Payns

Any reasonable person does not take satisfaction in the failure and destruction of another. This is especially true when the other is innocent of any wrongdoing or lack of judgment.

Yet sometimes, epic failure can constructively serve as an example of what not to do. If the individual states of our nation are a laboratory of democracy, then the states of Europe are the laboratory of socialism. What we are witness to in Greece, and eventually in Spain, Italy, and possibly France, is the painful death of the welfare state.

Credit markets are locking up all over the continent; meanwhile, trillions have been pumped into their banks in an effort to keep them afloat. But their situation is so bad that they cannot even take the risk of making business loans. Employment is shrinking, and tax revenues are falling. Internally, the socialist cash-machine is running empty as other people's money dries up. It is all happening just as reader of American Thinker foresaw.

The welfare state's demise, long inevitable, will be painful and ugly, and it will harshly impact the weakest and the most innocent of the population. After all, the welfare state defies the laws of economics and the laws of mathematics. Take notice as the liberal and socialist agitators and pundits shake their collectivized fists at the sky and curse the gods without any noticeable change. The facts on the ground will do what they will, despite rhetoric or political pontifications coming from any quarter.

One of the first organs to fail is the socialized health care program. No matter its stated merits, a serious and impactful socialized medicine program is simply too expensive for any state to long sustain.

For months prior to the passing of ObamaCare, we were told -- repeatedly -- how it would "bend the cost curve downward" and open up better health care for millions of Americans...all at the same time!

The problem is that the pundits on the left at the time and still today don't even believe their own rhetoric. In fact, they are either living in a fantasy land that never existed or simply lying.

Back in May 2010, bluegrasspundit made mention of the total hypocrisy of the left with regard to ObamaCare.

After shilling for ObamaCare for months, the New York Times is now telling Greece getting out of the health care marketplace would allow health care costs to come down. The hypocrisy of the left is simple astounding.

The NY Times also made mention of the total impossibility of it all.

Another reform high on the list is removing the state from the marketplace in crucial sectors like health care, transportation and energy and allowing private investment.

What is also important to make note of is that these socialized countries do not have the traditional bogeyman that leftists point their finger at: a revenue-hungry military. The Greek military is small to the point of insignificance. The same is true with Spain, Italy, and most others on the continent. Their defensive needs were being functionally met and subsidized by the United States.

A recent article by the NY Times makes for overwhelming evidence of the disruption and pain this transformation causes to the innocent and the disadvantaged. While the article is slanted politically, it is worth reading in its entirety; the reader must realize that this will happen in other European nations, and eventually here in the U.S. should we be so foolish as to follow their example.

At public hospitals, doctors report shortages of all kinds of supplies, from toilet paper to catheters to syringes. Computerized equipment has gone unrepaired and is no longer in use. Nurses are handling four times the patients they should, and wait times for operations -- even cancer surgeries -- have grown longer.

Access to drugs has also been affected, as some drug manufacturers, owed tens of millions of dollars, are no longer willing to supply Greek hospitals. At the same time pharmacists, afraid that the government might not reimburse them, are asking for cash payments, even from those with insurance.

Brick by brick, the edifice of socialized medicine is ruthlessly and forcefully being taken apart.

The lesson here is for our nation to rid ourselves of ObamaCare entirely before it becomes embedded into the fabric of society, because it too will be rooted out by the forces of economics. It is easier to throw out the seed than uproot the plant, so the sooner this is done, the better. Anything less is a form a gross medical malpractice.