My esteemed Keloland colleague Cory Heidelberger still clings to the dream. He informs us that an NPR series makes socialized medicine look pretty good. No! Ya think? I have to say that I am skeptical of any national health care plan at this point, free market or othewise. And maybe they will take away my conservative card, but I am not convinced that a decent national health service can't work. A lot of reasonable folks say that the systems in France and the Netherlands is pretty good. Of course, these were the same reasonable people who told us that Castro's Cuba was a model for Latin America. But a stopped clock is right twice a day, so maybe socialism in health care can work.
But if you are going to make it work, you will have to make sure it doesn't work like socialism. The latter surely ranks as the most frequently tested idea in modern politics. The results have ranged from bad to disastrous. Just look at France, which is said to have this great medical care system. I wrote a lot about France back when mobs of immigrant youth were burning thousands of cars every day, instead of a few hundred on Saturday night (which is what passes for normal). Jurgen Reinhoudt at Real Clear Politics has this:
To say that France's social model is far from perfect is an understatement: in spite of the state absorbing more than 50% of GDP, France has suffered, since the 1980s, from rising child poverty rates, persistently high unemployment, a chronic sense of economic malaise, and the continual enrichment of the system's "insiders" at the expense of the system's "outsiders." More importantly, France's social model fails to deliver precisely what it proclaims to: economic justice, inter-generational fairness, economic opportunity and social protection, particularly to young workers entering the labor market, minorities, immigrants, middle-aged women and other vulnerable groups.
Reinhoudt relies heavily on Timothy Smith, and his book France in Crisis (Cambridge University Press, 2006). Smith is, we are told, much fonder of the social model in Sweden and the Netherlands. I don't know about Sweden, but the low country is sure having their share of social turmoil lately. Maybe socialism works only at higher altitudes.
Socialism means social control of the government and economy, as opposed to private control of the latter. It always promises "society" protection from competition or inconvenience on the part of someone or something else. In some cases the something else is market forces. Protecting people from market forces, like keeping them hovering in the air, is expensive. Someone has to pay to keep someone else aloft. If you've got a job in France you have protection galore, against people who don't have jobs but want them. In all cases what socialism protects someone from is someone else. Every European society works the same. Part of the society is privileged and protected against another part of the society, which is bought off by housing subsides and free health care. That holds up as long as the productive part of society can afford it.
Oh, and the productive part also has to have a few babies now and then. That ain't happening in Europe. Once you get firmly enough wedded to the idea that government is all about providing you a comfortable life and long vacations, children just seem like another burden. You are already paying for enough North African immigrants as it is.
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