What Does the Brooklyn Bridge Have to do with Socialized Medicine?

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The idea of Medicare for all as proposed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Kamala Harris and many others on the left sounds amazing.  Theyre a little vague on details but as I understand it everyone on U.S. soil whether they pay into the system or not would be entitled to free quality healthcare from birth until death.  That would include rich and poor healthy and infirmed young and old citizen and non-citizen alike.  There would be no exemptions no carve-outs like there were for Obamacare.  After all who would want to be exempt from a dream program like that?  And all of it would be administered by the government and funded by taxes on the wealthy. 

Their plan is based on a simple premise:  Healthcare is a basic human right.  Were it not for an oversight 240 years ago our Declaration of Independence certainly would have recognized our God-given unalienable rights as life liberty the pursuit of happiness and healthcare.    

But our Founding Documents dont mean much to todays Progressives or Democratic Socialists anyway.  And because they see socialized medicine as an enormous benefit to our society that $32 trillion price tag is also largely irrelevant to them.  As Ocasio-Cortez suggested they can work out all the details later.  But the basic idea is to tax the extremely wealthy the top one percent who they say really dont need the money anyway.  They claim that the rest of the country the other 99 percent will be absolutely elated with the result. 

I see why to the younger generation the plan sounds awesome.  Its also easy to understand why families who regularly struggle with medical bills would welcome it as would those with pre-existing conditions and the otherwise uninsured.  The way theyre selling it Id expect even the millions of Americans who are happy with their health insurance to also be clamoring for socialized medicine. 

But there are political pie-in-the-sky promises and then theres reality.   

One of the most common justifications for socialized medicine goes something like this: Were the only civilized nation in the world that doesnt guarantee healthcare for everyone."  If that phrase sounds familiar its because similar words have been spoken in almost every household across the country.  I used the same argument myself as a child whenever I wanted something my parents couldnt afford …but everyone else has one."    

They always gave the same response in the form of a hypothetical question: If everyone else jumps off the Brooklyn Bridge does that mean you have to join them?"  I never had a rebuttal so that usually ended the discussion.  Besides I guess I instinctively knew that my everyone else" argument was pretty weak in the first place.  Looking back I now understand that their rhetorical question was really a life lesson about common sense herd mentality financial responsibility and envy.

Ocasio-Cortez and her acolytes seem to envy Swedens model of socialized medicine.  But the medical needs and healthcare issues of that country of around 10 million citizens cant compare to those of our country with more 300 million people.  America is in fact one of the three most populated countries in the world except for China and India.  And incidentally all three of those nations including Communist China currently provide their citizens with some combination of government-run healthcare and private insurance.    

Ms. Cortez also glosses over the funding of her proposed plan.  She acknowledges that higher taxes on the wealthy would be necessary but fails to mention that even Sweden cannot maintain its healthcare system by taxing only the top one percent.  The enormous tax burden is shouldered by the entire population.

Admittedly most Swedes seem content with socialized medicine but that country is also dealing with a mass immigration problem.  There is no way it can offer healthcare to the tens of thousands of new immigrants without raising taxes to even higher levels reducing quality of care or rationing services.

And there are other issues Progressives ignore when they make the every other country" argument.

Whats the relative quality of the healthcare other countries provide?  Is it rationed?  What percentage of their GDP is spent on defense vs. healthcare?  Do they even have a defense budget?          

And while they love to talk about Sweden they never mention some of the other welfare states whose leaders promised more than they can deliver - countries like Greece France and most recently Venezuela.

Yes its understandable that a lot of Americans might welcome this innovative" approach to healthcare Medicare for all - socialized medicine.  Its too bad that the people who are selling it never learned that simple principle most Americans learned in childhood: 

Dont buy something you cant afford and dont be envious of those who do.

This article first appeared on westernjournal.com under a different title.

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