In a previous post (lie #4) I described how multiple ObamaCare leaders have admitted that a “Public Option” is merely a means to an end – the eventual government take-over of healthcare through a single-payer system. Naturally, one might ask, “Is that so bad? Is socialized healthcare a better system?”. The answer is absolutely, unequivocally, and without a doubt….NO! I will proceed to destroy the five most common arguments in favor of socialized, universal, single-payer healthcare.
False Argument # 1 – Medical treatment is better in countries with socialized healthcare.
The 2007 Lancet Oncology study showed U.S. cancer survival rates were higher in every category than in Europe, especially in Great Britain where their 50-year-old government-run universal healthcare fared worse than the European average.
Also, the 2007 National Bureau of Economic Research study also showed U.S. Cancer survival rates where also higher than in Canada.
False Argument # 2 – Treatment is more accessible in countries with socialized healthcare.
After proving that the quality of treatment in the U.S. is better than it’s socialized healthcare counterparts, the ObamaCare proponent will predictably complain that the statistics you’ve used illustrate only pre-diagnostic data and do not take into account those who, due to financial burden, do not have access to the superior treatment available through private healthcare. Essentially they argue that sacrificing superior treatment is justified if everyone has access to crappy healthcare. While the merit of such a trade-off of quality for quantity is debatable, for the time being I will entertain this argument.
In order to assess the quality of healthcare for all, including those that for whatever reason don’t get treated, statistics illustrating total death counts by cause must be reviewed. Fortunately, we have a 2004 report from the World Health Organization that does just that. When death rates by cause is adjusted for population, the U.S. fares better than the celebrated government healthcare found in Canada, France, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom.
I cranked the numbers for each of the six countries previously mentioned. Death rates for “communicable, maternal, perinatal, and nutritional” (which encompasses TB, childhood diseases, and Hepatitis) where lower in the U.S. than France, Japan, and the UK and only slightly worse than Canada and Italy. Cancer (“malignant neoplasms”) death rates carry more weight in significance as between the six countries I reviewed, Cancer is more than 4 times more deadly than communicable, maternal, perinatal, and nutritional illnesses combined. The U.S. had lower death-by-cancer rates than each of it’s socialized healthcare counterparts.
As these numbers represent death by cause totals, it can be concluded that the current private-run healthcare of the U.S. boasts lower death-rates (by illness) than government-run healthcare….even when access to healthcare, or lack thereof, is accounted for.
False Argument # 3 – Socialized healthcare is less expensive than private health-care.
This argument is humorous as lower healthcare spending is one of, if not the greatest reason for the inferior treatment found within socialized healthcare.
Socialized healthcare, as I discussed in a previous post (lie #2), is not a self-sufficient or “deficit-neutral” system. There is never enough tax money coming in to address everyone’s healthcare needs. Therefore, to avoid taxing everyone out of existence (which socialized healthcare gets as close as they can to doing) and spending the country out of existence, they must set GDP price controls which lead to the rationing of care. Thus, these countries are constantly struggling just to stay afloat and keeping the entire system from imploding on itself. Needless to say, they don’t have the billions necessary to invest toward the development of new and more efficient drugs and treatments. Instead, they wait for those advancements to come out of the US’ private-run healthcare and for the cost to come down enough for their broken system to be able to afford it.
False Argument # 4 – Life expectancy is higher in countries with socialized healthcare.
Warning, this argument is so irrelevant and easy to tear apart it may embarrass the person that spent the time and energy gathering data to prove an irrelevant point. Life expectancy rates do not focus on medical data, but is a broad topic that includes a plethora of non-medical variables such as suicide and alcohol and drug use. The person using this red herring argument is trying to distract you from the medical data that proves their point wrong and is straining to create an argument from irrelevant data.
False Argument # 5 – It’s the government’s purpose to provide critical things such as heatlhcare.
Many things that can be viewed as necessities and as critical were intentionally left unmet and unsubsidized by our founding fathers. Needs such as employment, housing, food, and health insurance where to be provided by, earned, and possessed by a self-sufficient and independent people – not by the government. Essentially, instead of just giving Americans a fish, the goal was to creat an environment in which all could have the ability to learn how to fish. To justify a government takeover of healthcare because of it’s important and critical nature, why not put the government in charge of all important and critical needs such as employment and houseing?
This type of thinking is what I believe led communist Soviet Union’s Nikita Khrushchev to prophecy that the U.S. will be led into communism through “small doses of socialism”. Such thinking leads many to believe that Obama’s magical utopian road of entitlements ultimately leads to the dark and freedomless destination of communism.
Posted by W. Garrett Myler 
