Leaders of the Democratic Party (some of whom are announced candidates for president) are calling for Universal Medicare including doctors’ visits and hospitalization. The same ones also call for free College for all who qualify. The bar is pretty low for qualifying. Here are my responses.
I understand the justified emotion on the issue of medical coverage. As a pastor I had congregants who were financially ruined after their coverage for chronic and serious medical conditions ended. We have to solve this problem. This is not a new idea or so radical an idea since some nations do have such coverage. This was part of the platform of Harry Truman in 1948i Those who oppose this talk about it adding tens of trillions to the national budget. However, this does not always take into account that the money put into private insurance would be switched into the government program, and if it is like Israel, the families pay the insurance tax on a sliding scale according to income. Yet there are several issues.
I don’t know why liberals never seem to face the terrible inefficiency of government programs. In addition, the fraud in Medicate is quite alarming. This plan will lead to rationing since the government never can pay for all that is needed in a fast and efficient way. We have this issue in Israel and have to use private insurance to overcome long waiting times even if the situation is serious. This plan will also continue to inflate costs and produce great pressure to expand spending. My view is that those who propose this too quickly seek solutions through bigger and bigger government. Again, I would like to see private insurance and real competition as over against todays cartel like situation with insurance companies, hospitals and the present domination of trial lawyers also increasing costs. If there were different kinds of medical accreditation which would qualify plans, even for some alternative medicine, people could be given vouchers when they cannot afford insurance. Genuine competition could bring down costs. And, yes, I think taxing heavily those that do not buy into insurance is important since we need all in the system to lower costs The state can back up catastrophic situations beyond the ability of the private insurance.
Free college is a terrible idea for several reasons. First, the money could much better be spent in elementary and high schools by giving vouchers to families to choose the school of their desire for their children. The public system has declined even in so called good schools. We need to equalize educational quality for children. Real justice requires a real choice giving real justice opportunity for children. Better to support vocational training for young adults as well.
In addition,
Real education has largely died in the leftist post-modern attack on classical education. So much of the cost of college is an unbelievable expansion of administrators and bureaucracy. There are better ways to lift the poor into opportunity than to have them sit in classrooms where education really is not happening.