The battered American syndrome

The attitude of most Americans toward attempts by their government to "help" them is not dissimilar from the attitude of woman suffering from "battered wives syndrome." They believe the next time will be better than the last time. Whatever happened before, no matter how often, won't happen again. They'll give him, or it, another chance.

The result, however, is usually disappointment, bruises, scars or worse. But the scars heal, the bruises fade and the disappointment turns into hope. Rarely, it seems, is the result disillusionment or even long lasting insight. Today, despite past experiences and numerous failed examples of previous efforts of the government to deliver on its promises, many Americans believe their government can actually deliver a health care system that is better than what they already have.

Granted what they have is not perfect. Too many people don't receive the health care they should get because they can't afford the care or the insurance that'll enable them to get it. Others simply can't get it because know one will offer it to them or they don't work for an employer who offers it. Or, they don't have an employer. Still other don't buy insurance simply because they don't think they need it since they are young, healthy and immortal and therefore won't die. Instead they spend the money they've saved by living with their parents to buy a faster car or motorcycle that will accelerate from zero to death in 12 seconds, letting taxpayers cover the expense of peeling them off the pavement or unwrapping them from around the tree.

We, of course, already have a government health care program. It's called Medicare. It's modeled after that other great American Ponzi scheme, Social Security. Together these programs provide the elderly with retirement and health care benefits. Most recipients are happy with these programs because the benefits can be very generous. For example, while most working people have to make do with the limited choices of HMOs, Medicare recipients can go to any doctor they want. Since the elderly vote, and in some Midwestern cities they vote even after they've died, Congress has been very generous with those benefits.

But Medicare is no more an example of a successful government program than was President Johnson's War on Poverty, which poverty won; the U.S. Postal Service, which is considering cutting Saturday delivery while raising rates; or FEMA's response to any recent natural disaster. Medicare and Social Securty are slowly bleeding the country dry. Sometime this century all collected federal taxes will to go to pay for elderly entitlements.

Simply put, Medicare and Social Security are huge wealth redistribution programs in which money is taken from those working and earning to be lavished on the elderly who aren't doing either. A government health care program for everyone not covered by private insurance, which in time will be everyone, will, according to the Obama administration, be very different. It will be a huge wealth redistribution program in which money is taken from those working and earning and lavished on anyone who isn't doing either.

The fatal flaw with this approach is the same one Margaret Thatcher identified as the problem with socialism, "eventually you run out of other people's money."