What's Worse Than Pure Socialism?
Wednesday, March 2, 2011 at 02:19AM Socialism disguised as capitalism.
The associated press reports that Florida lawmakers want to “privatize” Medicaid. The story begins, as is typical, with a heart-wrenching story of a person being denied health care due to some evil private company. It then goes on to describe various individuals’ and groups’ opinions of this “privatization” – generally using an impersonal tone to describe the benefits, and an emotional, connected tone to describe the downsides.
But barely any words are spent describing what the changes are going to be. As it turns out, the change is only that State-run Medicaid will be administered through HMOs and other private companies.
In what sense can this be considered privatization? Will it give individuals more authority over their own health care dollars? No. Will it free up health care providers? No. Medicaid will still be run by the government. The HMOs will make a profit, but not by serving their customers. Another article captures it accurately:
“In effect this would be a state-sponsored creation of a for-profit middleman to manage tax dollars”
It is not even a step in a free market direction. In fact it’s worse, much worse.
By having for-profit companies administer a failing program, the government bureaucrats will be able to blame the companies for the failings that the government would otherwise face: rising costs, shortages, increasing dissatisfaction. This would only further the average voter’s anti-market bias, and increase support for more government “solutions” to problems.
Ayn Rand once said that national review was the most dangerous magazine in America because a false defense of capitalism can result in the destruction of capitalism. When I first heard that, I thought she was crazy. But now I see her point.
With “privatization” advocates like these, who needs socialists?
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