August, 2019, Part 5, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: The Failure of Single Payer Health Care Systems Around the World, Continued

Every month for years now we have had to discuss how bad Obama Care is turning out to be under the continuing theme, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.” This month is no different. As the legislation continues to march through America, driving up health care and health insurance prices as it serves as dead weight on economic growth, it cements its rightful place as the worst piece of legislation Washington has ever produced.

It never had a chance to be successful since it really never addressed the underlying root causes of our ever increasing health costs in the country:

• Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, resulting in obscenely high obesity rates for the country.
• Our food chain is infested with overdoses of high fructose corn syrup, salt, sugar, and other unhealthy additives. 
• Americans smoke too much. 
• Americans do not exercise enough. 
• The country is in serious need of health care tort reform. 
• Barriers to insurance company competition across state lines need to come down. 
• Obama Care never “followed the money” to find out who is actually profiting from the ever escalating healthcare costs in this country and how to get those factors under control. 
• Obama Care never got the immense amount of fraud and abuse in current government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, under control in order to save money to efficiently fund other government health care initiatives. 
• Obama Care never put serious research money towards curing the major diseases that drive high healthcare costs such as high frequency cancers and dementia type diseases. 

You cannot resolve any problem unless you understand and address the underlying root causes. No difference here: Obama Care legislation never addressed these listed root causes and thus, has no chance of ever being successful.

But it is not just missing the root causes of our healthcare costs that makes Obama Care so horrible. It resulted in millions of Americans losing access to their favored doctors, hospitals, and insurance policies. It has caused insurance premiums, deductibles and copays to escalate substantially. It will likely add trillions of dollars to the national debt. It has exposed millions of Americans to higher than necessary identity theft chances. It has created government bureaucracies that are wastefully spending taxpayer wealth and being exploited by criminal elements. It has stifled economic growth and job creation.

These are just a sample of the types of idiocy that we have been reviewing for the past several years in this blog relative to Obama Care. To read those past posts, just enter the phrase, “the unfolding disaster,” in the search box above.

Two posts ago we reviewed the many, many failures and disasters of Obama Care, probably the worst piece of legislation ever passed when it comes to comparing it to its objectives and its promises. This was the Federal government’s most recent and deepest attempt to try and control the healthcare of Americans and it has ended badly. 

In our previous two posts, we showed the numbers and realities around the world of how single payer healthcare systems always fail to provide effective and efficient health care to its citizens. Despite these realities, many Democratic candidates for President want to implement a failed system like this in this country. Today we will continue that discussion of failed single payer healthcare systems from other countries, further proof that this approach to healthcare is a bad, bad idea.

We continue that discussion today, the failures of the single payer healthcare model:

1) Again, let’s start up Canada , today with an example of how bad wait times are in that country under their single payer healthcare system, as described in a Reason magazine article:

• Joy Hataley, a doctor up in Ontario, Canada, recently had to refer a patient to a neurologist at Kingston General Hospital.
• Obviously a referral to a neurologist likely represents a potentially grave and dangerous situation. 
• When the patient went to make the appointment on the doctor’s referral he was told it would be four and half YEARS before he could even get an appointment, never mind whatever treatment might be necessary. 
• The doctor was told that if this inane four and a half year waiting period was not acceptable the hospital would try to get their patient in to see a neurologist in another city altogether. 
• But if the wait time was four and half years Kingston General Hospital, what are the odds that the wait time in a different city would be much shorter? 

Single payer systems always result in the rationing and the delaying of receiving medical attention. If someone needs to see a neurologist, it is doubtful that a four and a half year wait is an acceptable time frame to wait from a life and death perspective. The more government intervenes in the healthcare industry, be it Obama Care or a single payer system, the worse the health care that will be provided becomes.

2) People like Bernie Sanders who advocate for a single payer system like to point to Nordic countries who Sanders claims has found the single payer health care model to be the best thing ever. However, people in Finland might have a problem with this false assertion:

• The Washington Free Beacon recently reported: The government of Finland collapsed Friday “due to the rising cost of universal health care and the prime minister’s failure to enact reforms to the system.”
• This caused Prime Minister Juha Sipila and his entire cabinet to resign after his governing coalition could pass the necessary laws to reform the government’s single payer health care system.Much like the U.S., Finland has an aging population with 26% of its citizens expected to be over the age of 65 by 2030.An aging population almost always means higher and higher healthcare costs. 
• To head off financial disaster, Finland has tried to cut costs and boost health care efficiency for years but has been unsuccessful in doing so, resulting in more and more financial distress for the government. 
• And according to Reuters, Finland is not alone in this crisis: “Nordic countries, where comprehensive welfare is the cornerstone of the social model, have been among the most affected. But reform has been controversial and, in Finland, plans to cut costs and boost efficiency have stalled for years.” 
• Other Nordic countries with single payer systems such as Sweden and Norway are facing similar health care financial stress. 

Nasty stuff, people getting older and their government likely not going to be able to fulfill its commitment of health care. And yet, liberals and Democrats in Washington continue to champion a losing approach to healthcare with a recent tweet by Bernie Sanders showing just how ignorant he is of reality and finance: “In the United States it costs on average $12,000 to have a baby. In Finland it costs $60.”

So Sanders thinks that for $60 you can give birth to a baby in Finland and that $60 will cover hospital, doctor, nurse, and medicine costs for the birth. It does not cost $60, Bernie. It costs much more, it is just that the couple having the baby pay less while the rest of Finland society and taxpayers pay much more than $60.

Are you that ignorant of finance or are you just a flat out liar? In either case, single payer systems are not efficient, effective, or healthy for sick citizens. Obama Care proved that and the Scandinavian countries, along with England and Canada, prove that every day.

That will do it for today’s single payer failure review: single payer failures in places where it was promised not to fail such as Finland and Sweden and another example where vital healthcare treatment is delayed for years, not days, under the Canadian single payer system. More failures to come.

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