Healthcare Reform a bailout for LBJ's Great Society

The twenty-first century can, so far, be dubbed the century of the bailout. We have bailed out Wall Street for making stupid investments. We have bailed out the auto industry for making cars no one wants. We have bailed out insolvent home owners (in theory at least) for being unqualified for home loans in the first place. With Cap and Trade, we are currently attempting to bail out third world countries as a reward for failing to develop self-sustaining industry and as a penalty to us for having done so. And the centerpiece of our bailout agenda is to nationalize healthcare and force everyone to buy health insurance in order to bail out LBJ’s “Great Society” Ponzi scheme.

The burden of maintaining Medicare and Medicaid has been mounting for decades. Everyone knows they are unsustainable, yet one election cycle after another, politicians forestall the inevitable by merely tinkering with a system that is irreparably flawed. By 2040, the GAO estimates that total government expenditures will represent 40 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), with interest on the national debt accounting for over 12 percent. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will account for over half of all government spending, at around 18 percent of GDP.

Such predictions are echoed by a recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) ten-year forecast that predicts an additional $9 trillion in federal deficits between now and 2019.

But the real panic behind the Health Care Reform bill is that Medicare and Medicaid are predicted in a Congressional Budget Office report to grow faster than the economy over the next 75 years. The
CBO Report predicts that healthcare expenses alone will reach 40% of GDP by 2085.

If America were economically robust – meaning that we were debt-free; had a healthy trade surplus; a vital manufacturing base, solid infrastructure and low taxes – we might be able to sustain this charade for a little while longer. But considering that our total debt (public and private) exceeds 400% of GDP; our public debt alone is in excess of $11 trillion – with unfunded entitlements taking that number over $56 trillion; our trade deficit regularly exceeding $300 billion per year; our financial institutions are faltering; our industrial base is withered and our infrastructure is locked in the ‘70’s; there is not much hope for even short term sustainability.

Enter the hyperbole of the health care “crisis.” In the most audacious campaign yet by the partnership between socialists in Washington and the media machine they own, the American health insurance industry has been cast as the villain. Simultaneously, predictions of better quality, greater availability and reduced costs of health care under government management have been falsely advertised. This is a cunning attempt to expand the pool of government resources by which Medicare and Medicaid can be subsidized as a mere sidebar to the nationalization of an entire sector of the US economy.

It does not take much imagination to predict how the assimilation of the entire medical care system into the gaping maw of federal bureaucracy could accomplish a bailout of Medicare and Medicaid. The state will become the single provider once private health insurance companies are squeezed out. Then the Medicare and Medicaid bureaucracies can be consumed by the new, bigger national healthcare system. Add new revenues from mandatory health care coverage and the insolvency of Johnson’s Great Society will be submerged by the vast new influx of revenues from all those healthy contributors.

One big problem with this solution is the predictable performance of government programs. A whole new bureaucracy, including the additional costs, the waste and mismanagement; the favor-trading, pull-peddling, corruption, bribery and the politicization of medical care, will ultimately result in the degradation of the finest medical care delivery system in the world.

Some examples of what we can expect from a national health care bureaucracy follow. Consider the track record of other government programs promoted by stately rhetoric and impossible promises:

• The Federal Reserve System was established in 1913 to stabilize the economy. Since its inception, the Federal Reserve has presided over the crashes of 1921 and 1929; the Great Depression of ’29 to ’39; recessions in ’53, ’57, ’69, ’75, and ’81; a stock market “Black Monday” in ’87, and the recessions of 2001 and ‘07. In 1913, the price of gold was $32.00 per ounce. On November 28, 2009, it was $1,177.00 per ounce. That is a 98% devaluation of the dollar, in 96 years. Based upon its advertised purpose, the Federal Reserve System is an abysmal failure.

• Social Security; established in 1935. After 74 years trying to get it right, it’s broke.

• Fannie Mae; established in 1938. After 71 years trying to get it right, it’s broke.

• War on Poverty; started in 1964. After 45 years and $1 trillion, "the poor" are still poor.

• Medicare and Medicaid; established in 1965. After 44 years trying to get it right, they’re broke.

• Freddie Mac; established in 1970. After 39 years trying to get it right, it’s broke.

• The Department of Energy; created in 1977 to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. It has grown to employ 16,000 people with an annual budget of $24 billion, and we now import more oil than ever. After 32 years trying to get it right, it’s a total failure.

• Department of Education; established in 1979 to improve education standards. It has a current annual budget of $68.6 billion; and no improvement in education standards can be linked to any of its policies or actions. After 30 years trying to get it right, it’s a total failure.

If all of these wasteful, fraudulent failures are not troubling, then consider what level of excellence you expect from your surgeon or your pharmacist. Then ask yourself if the track record above affects the confidence you will feel as you go under the knife wielded by a defacto government employee. If there is even the slightest doubt, it should be enough to offset the hopes inspired by promises of cheaper, better, more plentiful health care – especially when such promises are lies.

Our health care system could use some improvement. But based upon the government’s track record, it is the least rational choice to do the job.