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Promoting socialized medicine

Sunday, July 8 at 12:01 AM

This Speakout has not been edited

By Francis M. Miller, Parker

I am increasingly concerned that the Denver dailies are assisting in a not too subtle attempt to shape public opinion to be receptive to schemes being concocted by Colorado’s 208 Blue Ribbon Commission on Health Care. Initiated by a governor and a legislature that are both clueless as to how to solve the health care problem, this commission has deftly created a situation whereby two obviously unacceptable proposals are being put up against two proposals which would essentially mandate the uninsured buy health care insurance. This is classic railroading when you are forced to pick from options that have been selected to lead to a preordained outcome. Is there any question in your mind that this Commission is going to call for some kind of mandated insurance similiar to Massachusetts and California?

As an aside, an article on July 1, 2007 in the NY Times by Pam Belluck, noted that Massachusetts, (with a population of nearly 6.5 million people) has, since 2006, been able to get only 130,000 people into their new scheme, and that required the insurance be free or subsidized. The rest of the uninsured in the state have said, thanks, but no thanks.

This whole endeavor is a not so veiled attempt to solve the State’s rising Medicaid cost crisis and the hospital’s and doctor’s collections problems by putting as many people as they can herd into a corral and force them to buy insurance. The problem is that federal ERISA plans in the state are not going to participate and you can bet that PERA and other governmental employee organizations are not going to touch this skunk with a ten foot pole. If the State unwittingly destroys the individual and small group health insurance market they will create a highly regressive system with many unintended consequences. Recent e

ditorials by members of the Commission are little-by-little revealing their socialistic philosophical core and their nearly complete lack of understanding of market-based economics. To say that the market has failed is to ignore the role government has played over the past 30 years in meddling in the health care market. You would have to go way back to before the 1970s to find any semblance of a functioning health care market. This is tantamount to the federal government polluting Rocky Flats and then proclaiming that nature doesn’t work any more. We are on a path to socialize the remainder of 16%, soon to be 20%, of the US economy. If the hospitals and doctors think that forcing the uninsured to buy health insurance is not one more step toward having their fees and practices regulated by a government bureaucracy they are mistaken. Global warming has less of a chance of melting the glaciers than the creeping vine of liberal Democratic socialism has of turning the medical profession into proxy employees of the government. You reap what you sow guys!!!

Fran Miller has been a management consultant for 25 years and he has a graduate degree in health policy from the University of Colorado’s Graduate School of Public Affairs. Miller is the past president of the Colorado Business Coalition for Health, a two term member of the Colorado Legislature’s Interim Committee on Health Care. He was appointed by governors Richard Lamm and Roy Romer to two terms as vice chairman of the Colorado Health Data Commission. He is presently writing a book on health care in the 21st century.

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Posted by Bassfisherman on August 28, 2007 08:05 AM

I work in the E.R. of one of our governments military hospitals. The military medicine right now is a model of socialized medicine. I can attest that the system DOSN"T WORK! The people have no consequences placed on them. They come to the E.R. for primary care solutions/problems (I.E. I have had a cold for 3 weeks, My eye has been bothering me for two months, My throat hurts, etc.). If they leave before being seen or it is not a true emergency they are not penalized. If the individual does make an appointment with their Primary Care Manager and decide not to go they are not penalized. If the one thing I have learned if people are not forced to be responsible for the price of their care they ABUSE the system. Governments intrusion into health care is poor at best and disastoures at worse. Look at the decline in health care every time the government gets involved. People want the government to fix things, the government can not even repair or maintain simple road ways with out problems. People complain about lose of privacy/rights to the government, what do you think will happen when the government has access to your medical records (The government owns all the military medical records of not only the active duty member, but retirees, and dependants).

Posted by Chris on July 11, 2007 12:41 PM

I thought the late 70's was when health care, like many other things was deregulated. Please tell us more!

Posted by Joe on July 11, 2007 12:19 PM

Thank you for speaking out, Francis! You're not alone in knowing that government has caused the problems in health care that claims that it can solve.

I love your analogy with Rocky Flats. We certainly do not have a free-market in health care, and government is slowly but surely enacting a hostile take over of the health insurance market. The Daily Camera published an article of mine about this here: www.tinyurl.com/ysuvwx.

The 208 Commission rejected my free-market proposal. (See www.WhoOwnsYou.org) One member of the commission stated, in one of his questions for me, that "over 50% of health care in Colorado is now provided through a “free market” model." This individual is either unaware of how much meddling government has done to cripple health care markets, or does not know what a free-market is. My response to his question (at www.tinyurl.com/2zcrhu) details how because of such meddling, we do not have a free market.

Also, check out the Colorado-based Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine at WeStandFirm.org.

Posted by Brian T. Schwartz on July 9, 2007 11:07 PM