How does universal health care “impoverish” a nation? By producing a healthy workforce? Healthy schoolkids who can actually learn? Elderly who have some quality of life that enables them to do more than simply exist? I’ve been to many corners of the globe and NEVER seen a country impoverished by universal health care, least of all Cuba.
For many of my Cuban friends, the health care system is the only positive thing they have to relate about that country. Cuban health care enriches the whole Caribbean basin by providing doctors who don’t mind staying in a Third World country, and the foreign exchange which their government repatriates (involuntarily of course) helps their economy. So I’d be glad to know exactly how you see universal health care impoverishing anybody.
Greed and selfishness on the other hand, is an entirely different matter…
The Cuban health care system is the
only positive thing they have to relate about that country? My stars! I encourage anyone who actually believes the Cuban health system is good to review this.
therealcuba.com/Page10.htm
One has to wonder whether anyone who believes the Cuban health system is good should be credited in any other way.
Nevertheless, let’s talk about the elderly for a moment, which you mentioned. Obama is taking half a trillion dollars out of Medicare. This is good for the elderly? The chief actuary for Medicare says Medicare reimbursement is on track to be less than Medicaid reimbursement in a few years. Now, against the background fact that providers presently limit their Medicaid patients and many won’t take them at all because they lose money on them, this is good for the elderly?
Obamacare has more than doubled the cost of “child only” insurance because of mandates, making it unaffordable for many who could previously afford those formerly inexpensive policies. And this ensures healthy children?
Does anybody really believe American kids have been “unable to learn” because they didn’t have Obamacare, but now they will? A jaw-droppingly preposterous proposition.
Back to Cuba. I never said that healthcare alone impoverished Cuba. I have little doubt that, like all truly communist countries, the main cause of the terrible poverty there is the fact that the elites drain the economy of resources for many things; particularly their own comforts and perks. The elites do have a passingly good system. The remainder of the population has a wretched system. We’re going to have a two-tier system too. Unlike the French, who admit they have a two-tier system, we don’t admit that’s where we’re going with Obamacare. But that’s where we’re going.
But there is no question in anyone’s mind that bloated benefits, taken as a whole, have caused the Greek and Spanish (and soon the Italian) economies to crater. It isn’t just healthcare. Nor is there any serious question that excessive indulgence in transfer payments generally discourages family formation. Why? Because IL + IP = C+T. (Income from labor plus income from property equals consumption plus Transfers) Transfers can be voluntary or involuntary. To the extent transfers to the government are forced, voluntary transfers to those to whom we would choose to transfer our income is reduced. That’s just basic economics. But it’s worse than that. Since recorkeeping began in 1929, that percemtage of national income going to transfer payments comes out of that percentage of national income going to labor. Since the 2/3-1/3 ratio between that percentage of national income going to labor versus to property (capital) never varies more than a few percentage points no matter what happens in the economy,(there are reasons for that) increases in transfer payments affect labor’s rewards far more negatively than capital’s.
Obamacare isn’t going to primarily affect “the rich” (those whose income derives from capital), but those who work for their living.
And, since more people live off their labor than off their capital, it should therefore be no surprise that there is an inverse correllation between government-forced transfers and births. If there’s no money to raise children, people don’t raise children. IL + IP=C + T, and there’s no way around that.
And that’s why we’re watching the sun set on western Europe, both economically and demographically. We’ll see a lot more of it.
And we’ll see it here too.
Not to mention encouraging a welfare state (kinda goes hand in hand with keynesian economics, so naturally Democrats support one).
Bingo.