In “The Obama Presidency” (Views, October), Doug Bandow warned that Democrat Barack Obama and his leftist policies will bring us some undesirable things, including big government and socialized medicine.  Of course, during the presidency of Republican President George W. Bush, even when the Republicans controlled Congress, government got much bigger and much more intrusive.  And while many conservatives claim to fear big government, they enthusiastically embrace multinational behemoths that are answerable to no one.  The nice little story that giant corporations answer to the free market is a useful cover for what often occurs: Financial intimidation of little concerns, crony capitalism, and the gaining of lucrative government contracts through political connections.  Megacorporations exercise a lot of control over the mythical free market.  The current financial meltdown is the fruit of this bitter tree.

Because “the left would remain the left,” Bandow warns that Obama’s government-sponsored healthcare system must be defeated because it would “socialize medicine.”  The Republicans, on the other hand, have proposed having a number of private insurance companies administer our healthcare system.  Talk about creating a bureaucracy!  There would be a number of different insurance companies that offer a variety of programs, all of which would be operating under the supervision of the 50 states, a real hodgepodge system.  As it is today, we spend nearly one third of our healthcare dollars on administrative costs.

These insurance companies would determine what medical procedures would be covered and how much their plans would cost, in order to make a good profit.  But in the minds of some conservatives, this would not constitute socialized medicine.  To them, something amounts to socialism if it is done under the auspices of government.  However, health insurance is by its very nature socialism in that the healthy are obligated to subsidize the unhealthy in the insurance pool, no matter who runs the pool.

We are told that we have the best healthcare system in the world.  Certainly, it is the most expensive.  When it comes to infant mortality and life expectancy, we rank considerably below other industrialized nations.  A recent study of heart-attack patients found that the Canadians did just as well as American patients even though Canada’s system is widely proclaimed here in America to be inferior.

I certainly am opposed to the ideology of socialism wherein the government runs and controls everything, but I am not against “socializing” certain activities when it might make economic sense.  At the same time I am just as vehemently opposed to having a few large, private corporations running and controlling almost everything.  This is corporatism and to be feared as much as socialism.


        —Robert A. Charron
Raleigh, NC

Mr. Bandow Replies:

Today’s healthcare system is far too bureaucratic, as Mr. Charron points out.  But these problems largely result from a federal tax policy that encourages business provision of health insurance, and particularly of comprehensive health insurance that acts more as the prepayment of standard, recurring medical expenses than as coverage against unlikely catastrophic expenses.  The consequences include high administrative expenses and arbitrary third-party controls over treatment.

The goal of healthcare reform should be to empower individuals and families by expanding health savings accounts and shifting the health-insurance tax deduction from employers to individuals.  The system does need to be reformed, but that means placing medicine under consumer, rather than government, control.