17 Arguments Against Socialized Medicine
Mr. Johnson is a teacher at
After School recently, a student posed an interesting question. His father was deceased, and he and his mother were living on a small income of which social security constituted a substantial portion. His mother had recently undergone an expensive operation, and it had been tough to pay the bills. His question was: "Why shouldn’t I favor government medical assistance?"
Other obligations prevented me from answering immediately, but the next morning the student received the following 17 points:
1. To the extent that your mother is living on social security she is already the victim of an actuarially unsound program classified by many as an outright fraud. A large part of your difficulty in meeting bills is the product of this government program designed to "help the aged." You may be sure that a government program designed to "help the sick" would fare no better, and probably worse. People do better if they are charged with personal responsibility for their welfare.
2. Social security payments are reduced or eliminated if your mother earns over $1,200 per year. This particular inequity within the entire inequitable program should be remedied, yet the problems posed by any attempt at "equity" tend to point up the undesirability of seeking "solutions" on a national basis.
3. Your mother’s income is undoubtedly suffering from inflation, which is the result of prior government activity. Please, therefore, do not ask for more government programs. Inflation raises the cost of everything, medical services and supplies included, and such "hidden taxation" affects all income, taxable and nontaxable.
4. If you ask the government to force others (through taxes) to help you in your particular situation, you cannot expect others not to ask government to force you to help them. In all probability you will end by paying out much more than you will receive through this process.
5. Assuming genuine need, private charities and local agencies would be willing and able to do considerably more along lines of aiding you if taxes were not already markedly diminishing their ability and inclination to function. The high progressive rate also tends to discourage many would-be doctors, whose terrific initial educational investment should be allowed to pay off. To the extent that a doctor shortage exists, government must share a substantial portion of the blame. My own dentist has cut his work-week from five days to four because, in the words of his financial adviser, he was "working too many days for the government." Do not, therefore, add to this tax burden.
6. Even assuming that the taxes required to run a program of government medicine might aid your mother in the short run, such taxation would also put more people into her shoes.
7. Government bidding for medical services and supplies would increase costs.
8. Since the program would be designed to help millions of others, and not your mother alone, competition for supplies and services, in addition to raising costs, might make it difficult to obtain any at all. A shortage of goods and services would immediately occur if the government were to attempt to mitigate the effects of its own actions through price controls. Priority given to more serious cases would frustrate immediate treatment of minor cases. A man who could be "back on the job" in minutes might have to wait weeks, with resulting loss of production to himself and to society.
9. A program of socialized medicine, once begun, would be extremely difficult, politically, to abandon, no matter how mistaken the program should prove to be.
10. The vast majority of doctors do not like socialized medicine. The reasons they give—dislike of regimentation, the destruction of doctor-patient relationship, and the like—while important in themselves, are secondary to the inescapable conclusion. If the government seeks to accomplish by force something that would not occur voluntarily and institutes a program which doctors dislike, the result will be fewer, and poorer, doctors. We hardly want this situation.
11. The temptation to "get something for nothing" would prove irresistible for many people. Statistics contrasting the number and length of illnesses of those who have government health insurance (in
12. Socialized medicine would be another long step to total socialism. Socialism, whatever else it may do, hardly increases production. By its emphasis on distribution, it retards production in a thousand ways. This will lower the standard of living for everyone, your mother included.
13. The functions of medicine are basically twofold: administration of known drugs and techniques, and research. We come in contact with the profession through the former, but progress occurs only through the latter.’ Socialized medicine would cause a shifting of emphasis from research to general upkeep, with the result that over-all medical progress would be retarded. The British experience proves this beyond question.
14. Since the science of medicine under free enterprise in the United States has given us the best medical service in the world’s history; since it has prolonged life in a phenomenal manner; since our medical supplies and services are infinitely superior to those in any other country… you should attempt to retain these advantages by fighting to retain the system under which they developed.
15. It is a mistake for the government to consider the problems of the sick apart from those of society as a whole. Such consideration is a private matter, to be solved by private and local methods. Such a narrow outlook on behalf of the government obscures the broader problem which is, in a moral sense, one of promoting respect for the individual and the furtherance of initiative and self-providence; in an economic sense, one of increasing production for the benefit of all citizens;3 and in a political sense, one of removing government as a battlefield for special favor and substituting cohesion and solidarity for division and disintegration.
16. No system, not even the free economy, can give everyone everything he wants at once. It is dangerous to allow or encourage any government to substitute its judgment for that of its citizens. It is well to keep in mind that no country has come close to matching the
17. Finally, let us consider the moral issue. You may feel that this is simple—that it is not morally correct for society to neglect those in need. But is there such a thing as "collective morality"?4 Is not moral action exclusively individual? Can any action be moral if it is induced by compulsion? Who is acting and thinking in moral terms: the person who, cognizant of those in need, seeks to remedy the situation insofar as possible by resorting to his own pocketbook, or a person who thinks only in terms of legislation to force everyone else to take care of the problem?
Even if the facts were otherwise and it could be shown that the government were capable of providing satisfactory medical care, the basic moral question you should ask yourself is this: What right have I to take another’s property without his consent, for my personal use? Under what conditions does it become proper or right for any individual or group to rob another?
I feel that when you have answered the questions contained in this last point, you may find the first sixteen arguments superfluous. At least I hope so.
Footnotes
1 For an excellent discussion of the tragedy of socialism in
2 Many complaints about the "excessive cost" of drugs (particularly in relation to the low cost of the ingredients) would cease if people realized that it is often expensive research which makes many drugs available at all. It frequently takes millions in research to make a "cheap pill."
3 Government cannot do this in any positive sense, as seems to be thought these days. Government is to do this by a policy of minimum interference, and in its capacity as referee… not active participant.
4 For development of this thought, consult William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other, (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers, Ltd.,1954).
Comment by Martin on 20 May 2009:
Number 14 is not a valid argument in my opinion. France has socalised medicine and the best healthcare system in the world. Saying that the healthcare services in the U.S. are infinetely superior to all others in the world is an extremely arrogant statement.
Comment by MOCKBADOC on 26 May 2009:
Mr. Johnson,
Very well-thought-out and eloquent statement of the beliefs that I hold very dear. Thank you for your efforts.
Martin:
Would it surprise you to know that France has had to start using for-profit private health care providers to augment its failing system? It’s true. It turns out that there are not long lines of people waiting to pay for others’ health care through punitive taxation. Instead, there are long lines of people waiting to get care from the meager facilities and few providers in France. Additionally, the French national system fails to cover a substantial portion of the costs of health care, so over 90% of the French must pay for an additional (private) insurance plan to make up the difference (just like Medicare patients here in the U.S.
Before you throw the baby out with the bath water, you might want to take a closer look at the supposed health care Utopia offered by these socialist regimes.
Once again, great article, Mr. Johnson.
Your pal,
MOCKBADOC
Comment by Joe G. on 28 May 2009:
Ah, I don’t know how to break it to you gentlemen but Mr. Johnson is very probably dead. The article was written in 1960. But to Martin’s statement, 1′st, Mr. Johnson was speaking, as I said, in 1960. He was EXACTLY correct. Look up ANY statistic relating to health care at that time and the U.S. was far and away the very best country for medical technology and it’s distribution to the average person. 2nd, your statement that France has “the best health care system in the world” is absurd and clearly false. Socialism never provides the abundance of a free market, as has been discovered by myriad countries in the past 5 decades. 3′rd, try thinking thoroughly through #17, and lose the knee jerk socialist reactions that you so obviously tend toward.
Comment by Matt Ching on 24 October 2009:
Dear Joe G.
Um, I dont know how to break it you sir, but you sound like a complete bafoon. First of all even if he is dead, why would it make his life work irrelavent?? if thus were the case, why do we study inumerous works of deceased Authors, are not the logics of John Locke, Montesequieu, and the founding fathers still the foundation of what the United States is Founded upon. Second, Although one or two of these statements are incorrect as of today, you cannot excuse the entire article which still contains logical relevant information that disgraces the idea of socialized medicine If socialized medicine is so great, then why are almost all the country’s leaders who have the system trying to get rid of it?
Comment by Cafe on 18 December 2009:
Your 17 points are well written, but they culminate in an opinion…..and nothing more.
A dissenting opinion: Forcing the capitalists in this country to help pay for the 1/4 of America that aren’t able to afford health care and live on their own would be socialistic, but not necessarily bad, and definitely not bad for the long run economy. In the long run, maybe a thousand years from now, there would be more growth if we could do this.
European countries aren’t 10 trillion dollars in debt like the U.S. (even though most of ours is from wars and banks), and they are able supply everyone that they can the best health system care that is available to them.
Why do we believe that putting all possible efforts and money into health care for everyone would end up in a failure? If we value life as the greatest good with the most marginal benefit, then that model should trump all others.
The myths in this country that socialistic health systems are bad is just opinionated propaganda. Every formidable economic table indicates that our health system is the real failure in the long run for the total of society. The fact that we Mr. Johnson can even compare money to lives show’s that he shouldn’t be allowed to put the word “moral” in his article; Mr. Johnson should re-evaluate his ethics…..maybe go on a Buddhist mission or something.
It’s kind of sad that it took 17 over-drawn statements to actually make a solid case for his argument.
I will reiterate, I can have a better argument in one sentence: It is sad that one can even use money in an argument that has to deal with human lives.
The sad thing is that it’s Conservatives, a vast majority devout religious Christians as statistics indicate, that are the one’s that are so opposed to keeping people alive for as long as possible. Conservatives should be the people who actually take the moral high road in this argument.
The truth is that hundred’s of thousands of people die every year because our policies lack enough morals (I’m aware that contradicts the middle of your #17) but we think differently.
I’m a lifelong economics major, and I know that the little socialism we have is the only thing that keeps this country running as smoothly as it does.
There will hopefully be a public option some day, and the 35% of the money which we put into health care that goes straight to waste will be gone and that will be a start. The overhead costs that go to middle-men insurance companies will some day go to research and development for the doctors and scientists that are actually trying to do something that matters.
Damn the man…..Damn the man…. Say what you want about Karl Marx…. But I’d rather run with his economic model than the one the conservative’s in this country want.
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Comment by eafe on 9 August 2010:
you are a fucking retard half your reasons are just assumptions like “less doctors” because of socialized medicine just because they don’t like one aspect doesn’t mean they would stop practice you dumb fucking shit get half a brain and some fucking decency life isn’t about money it’s about being happy and helping others to be happy you money grubbing shit bag
Comment by James Madison Fan on 10 August 2010:
I find point 14 interesting. No doubt Mr. Johnson would lament government intervention in health care and drugs via the FDA but even with this supposedly terrible onus to carry around we still have the best doctors and meds on the planet.
Maybe the FDA and some aspects of government intervention aren’t the demonic fiends some on here would like us to believe?
Comment by jenfrhrt on 11 December 2011:
Isn’t the government already engaged in Socialized Healthcare? The entire US Armed Forces are covered, all government employees are covered as well as all of the citizen’s representatives in Congress. jus sayin’
Comment by Anonymous on 16 January 2012:
[eafe] First off, your incredible lack of intelligence is overwhelming. Your unnecessary profanity is embarrassing, and your argument is invalid because not only did Mr. Johnson provide logical and reasonable facts and support for his argument, but he also gave specific instances of it. “Less doctors” is not an assumption, it’s a reality of the morally repugnant and declining institution of socialism. Just think, how much debt do most doctors have as they exit medical school? How are they going to pay all of that off and make decent money if they are working for a socialized medical facility where they can only provide mediocre assistance, and menial assistance? Why would anyone go to medical school and become a doctor if you can’t hardly provide for your own family because of your debt from college? Mr. Johnson’s arguments are far more sound than your calling him names and such.
P.S. if Mr. Johnson happens to be still alive and sees this, I would like to thank him. I used a lot of this information in my debate class at my High school.
Comment by Smart on 30 January 2012:
American arrogance will never cease to surprise me. I’m am French, having lived in the U.S. for ten years. Here’s what I can say:
1. “Socialism”. It’s not an awful monster, unlike Reagan, Bush, and all the other republican morons try to let you imagine. It is a system that tries to help the people. France is hardly a socialist republic, but free market fanatics seem to be intent on painting it as some oppressive monster.
2. The French system works, it’s efficient. Unlike what most of you claim, the patients can pick their doctors. Usually the waiting time is very low, much lower than in public hospitals in the US. Our doctors are well paid, we have both public and private doctors, and life expectancy in France is much higher than in the US. Wonder why?
3. It’s true that 90% of French ppl use additional medical insurances. They are refered to as ” Mutuelles”. Those mutuelles are used to pay for unimportant medical costs, such as braces or second pairs of glasses. The government covers all major medical costs. They even covered my medical growth hormones, but they also cover artificial insemination and abortions.
4. France is one of the top five world economies, so i dont think “socialized medicine” is such a bad thing after all. Our standard of living is lower than the US. We work less on average than Americans, yet we produce more. Weird, huh ? Maybe that’s because we are healthier.
5. What you refer to as “socialized” medicine shows a very low understanding of economics and of the outside world. Universal healthcare is meant to ensure that all citizens get fair and human treatment. They all help our society in some way. Nobody wants to be poor, and people arent usually poor because they are lazy. Go tell that to a mother of two who just lost her American husband, and who works three jobs to cover her son’s celiac disease expenses. That’s me by the way. I’ll be moving back to france soon, life is much better there.
6. I’m surprised a high school teacher’s level of stupidity and lack of education could be that low. It looks like, both in the healthcare and the education field, France and Britain are ahead of the US.
Comment by Anonymous on 30 January 2012:
Re: James Madison Fan
You might want to justify a blatant assertion like that with a little more than a “because I said it’s true”.
Re: Smart
1. Socialism IS an awful monster that murdered and impoverished billions worldwide in its heydey. It may “try” to help but it routinely fails anyways.
2. Wonder why? France and America are two entirely different countries with entirely different cultures. French people have on average better nutritional diets, that’s basically the only significant reason why.
3. You realize that the size of the U.S. governments budget far outstrips France per capita? All this talk about “the government covers anything you want” is meaningless. Try being as socialist as the U.S. for once, then maybe you’ll understand. It’s easy to say “Socialized Healthcare is efficient and works” but that’s because your country doesn’t spend near as much as the US.
4. Where are you pulling this out of?
5. Whether universalized healthcare is “meant” to do something beneficial or not, the reality is it doesn’t.
6. Not worth responding to.
Comment by Libertarian Jerry on 31 January 2012:
Smart….1st. Britain’s socialized health system is bankrupt just as America’s Medicare and Medicaid systems are bankrupt. Now what? 2nd. I’d like to dump about 10 million intercity welfare recipients,people who don’t produce anything economically just consume,onto your French system and see how long that system stays “efficient.” 3rd. The whole world is retrenching their bankrupt socialist welfare states. Only the foolish can’t see or refuse to see whats happening. I think that the arrogant one is you who is too blind to see socialist failures.
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Comment by Anonymous on 22 April 2012:
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