100% of the people in most modern nations can thank their government for providing them with universal health care.
Really?
England first started experimenting with socialized medicine in 1911. The experiments were a failure, as they always have been everywhere.
The National Health Program became the law of England in July 1948.
In less than two years, there were more than half a million people on the waiting lists for hospitalization, while some forty thousand hospital beds were out of service because of a nurse shortage. The hospital shortage in Britain has become so acute that many mentally deficient and helpless, aged people are unable to secure institutional care. The only effective means of easing the shortage is to deny hospital admission to the old and chronically ill who cannot be discharged once they are admitted.
In industrial centers, some British doctors have as many as 4,000 registered patients each. Such doctors can give each patient only three minutes per call-three minutes overall, for consultation, diagnosis, prescription, filling out official forms, and maintaining proper records for governmental inspectors.
http://www.aapsonline.org/brochures/smoot.htm
Europeans are now learning some hard facts of life about socialized medicine: there's no such thing as a free lunch. The question is whether Congress will learn from Europe's mistakes as it takes the next steps in reforming the American health care system.
For many years advocates of government-run health care pointed to Europe as an ideal, noting that America was the "only industrialized country without a national health care system." Now, however, the European welfare states are slashing benefits in the face of rising health care costs.
A recent front-page story in the New York Times detailed the European cutbacks. According to the article, Britain, France and Germany are all being forced to limit access to care. Rationing, already extensive, is increasing.
The Europeans have run into a very simple economic rule. If something is perceived as free, people will consume more of it than they would if they had to pay for it. Think of it this way: if food were free, would you eat hamburger or steak? At the same time, health care is a finite good. There are only so many doctors, so many hospital beds and so much technology. If people overconsume those resources, it drives up the cost of health care.
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/hard-lesson-about-socialized-medicine
