Philip S. Dedig – 11/22/09

This page was last updated on November 22, 2009.

U.S. can afford health care for all; Philip S. Dedig; Beaver County Times; November 22, 2009.

Mr. Dedig supported the proposed federal gasoline tax holiday, Hillary Clinton for President, complained about “business as usual” (“Business as usual in D.C.,” 6/17/08) in Washington, DC, regarding energy, opposed offshore drilling, said Democrat voters deserve better candidates (“Local Democratic voters merit better,” 8/22/08), supported “bailing out Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae” (“Fed, Treasury had to move”, 9/30/08), told us we had “No choice but to help auto makers,” told us “College costs must be made affordable,” and supported the $787 billion “stimulus” package. If it’s a leftist position, Mr. Dedig supports it.

Below is a detailed critique of the letter.

“Thomas Douglas was voted as the greatest Canadian ever by the people of Canada.”

[RWC] Not exactly. The voters were viewers of the CBC show “The Greatest Canadian” five years ago. The Canadian government owns the CBC. According to the website, 1.2 million votes were cast but I couldn’t find the number of votes cast for a specific candidate. All the website appears to provide is the alleged ranking. Also, 1.2 million represents a maximum of about 3.6% of Canada’s population, and that assumes each voter did not cast more than one vote.

In any case, who looks to popularity contests for guidance? Popularity contests are how communist dictators (Mikhail Gorbachev - 1990) and terrorists (Yasser Arafat – 1994) win awards like the Nobel Peace Prize.

“In 1947, he put in place publicly funded health insurance in the province of Saskatchewan where he was premier.”

[RWC] In this context, “publicly funded” means taxpayer funded.

“Other provinces adopted this health reform plan, and in 1966 the Medical Care Act of Canada was adopted.

“The United States needs public servants like him instead of politicians where every issue is a vendetta. This is one of the reasons we have an employer-based health care system that is both costly and inefficient.”

[RWC] The reason “we have an employer-based health care system” dates back to FDR’s World War II economic policies. Please read my paper entitled “Healthcare” for details.

“Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats claim that we cannot afford health care reform. Those born around World War II have had the expenses of four wars, the Marshall Plan and now two more wars. These were added expenses and the economy did not collapse. Instead, it prospered.”

[RWC] Mr. Dedig forgot to throw in the space program. <g>

“If the United States can grow the economy at a rate of 3.5 percent and keep expenditures under 19 percent of the gross domestic product, which is doable, we can afford health care reform.”

[RWC] Mr. Dedig is comparing apples and oranges. Relative to income/wealth redistribution social programs like Medicare and Socialist Security, wars and the Marshall Plan had/have finite and relatively short lives. Also, with the exception of World War II, spending on the wars and the Marshall Plan was a much smaller percentage of GDP than would be the 19% of GDP cited by Mr. Dedig for a government-run, taxpayer-funded healthcare monopoly.

I suspect the reason Mr. Dedig didn’t make a more logical comparison and write something like “look how great Medicare and Socialist Security work” is because he knows both are Ponzi schemes and financial failures. According to the Medicare Trustees in their report to Congress in 2009, Medicare is now in deficit (outlays exceed Medicare tax revenue) and will be bankrupt in 2017. Regarding Socialist Security, SS will go into deficit in 2016, the Disability Insurance portion of SS will be bankrupt in 2020, and the overall SS “trust fund” (the equivalent of a stack of federal government “IOUs” for revenue already spent by the feds for other programs) will be exhausted by 2037.

“The United States has the greatest wealth of all the nations of the world. We deserve the best health care for all of our citizens.”

[RWC] Even if I thought (which I clearly don’t) the idea a government-run, taxpayer-funded monopoly could deliver healthcare cheaper than a true free market system for a given level of accessibility, choice, quality, timeliness of treatment, et cetera, I’d choose to pay more for the free market system in order to maintain a piece of my freedom. Whenever we turn over responsibility for a portion of our lives to the government, we’re also giving away chunks of our freedom.

Please read my paper entitled “Healthcare” for most of my comments on this topic.