A recent cancer seminar provided a good example why government run health care will always fail.
I recently attended a cancer research seminar that provided a very clear example why government involvement in health care is a very bad idea.
This seminar featured about a dozen speakers from various research and treatment institutions from around the country. With one notable exception, subjects of these speakers ranged from cancer research for both detection and curing to recent advances in treatment methods.
The one notable exception was the presentation of a government employee of the National Institutes of Health.
Whereas every other speaker discussed advances in his field of study or practice, the government speaker's subject was about questioning the validity of early testing to discover cancer in its more treatable early stages.
Why did the government-funded paper argue against testing for early detection? To save money. The entire emphasis was on testing for those whose results were negative as a wasted cost because it produced no benefit. Lost to this speaker was the significant value to those in the minority who tested positive and whose cancer was detected at a very treatable early stage!
It is generally agreed that catching any cancer at an early stage will lower treatment costs dramatically and improve the patient's prognosis for a full recovery. That benefit was never factored into the cost analysis of the study performed by the government agency
To a government-run health care program, your health is of secondary concern. Reducing costs are primary.
Whenever money is the objective of any enterprise, that effort is doomed to failure.
No successful business can survive if its primary motivation is making money. While profit is a necessary condition of any enterprise, the primary motivation for a successful enterprise must be to provide for some needed product or service. This has been demonstrated countless times.
Those who don't understand this fundamental law of economic viability are doomed to failure, whether in a capitalist or socialist economy. And socialism is inevitably all about minimizing cost, not maximizing service. The real irony is that socialism ultimately costs more to deliver poorer service!
So long as government can steal from its citizens through onerous taxation, socialism will not collapse under its own weight. That is not the case with a private enterprise that makes profit its primary objective. Both are doomed, but which one is going to cost everybody the most?
Author of "Looking Out the Window", an evidence-based examination of the "climate change" issue, Bob Webster, is a 12th-generation descendent of both the Darte family (Connecticut, 1630s) and the Webster family (Massachusetts, 1630s). He is a descendant of Daniel Webster's father, Revolutionary War patriot Ebenezer Webster, who served with General Washington. Bob has always had a strong interest in early American history, our Constitution, U.S. politics, and law. Politically he is a constitutional republican with objectivist and libertarian roots. He has faith in the ultimate triumph of truth and reason over deception and emotion. He is a strong believer in our Constitution as written and views the abandonment of constitutional restraint by the regressive Progressive movement as a great danger to our Republic. His favorite novel is Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and believes it should be required reading for all high school students so they can appreciate the cost of tolerating the growth of unconstitutional crushingly powerful central government. He strongly believes, as our Constitution enshrines, that the interests of the individual should be held superior to the interests of the state.
A lifelong interest in meteorology and climatology spurred his strong interest in science. Bob earned his degree in Mathematics at Virginia Tech, graduating in 1964.
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