Socialized Medicine Ain’t Freedom

by | Feb 7, 2022

Socialized Medicine Ain’t Freedom

by | Feb 7, 2022

The emergence of a pro-Enlightenment, pro-reason, anti-woke left, with its eloquent declarations in favor of freedom, is welcome indeed. But this political force still has some way to go. It is disappointing to hear the same people who effectively and properly debunk the power elite in so many ways, including its Covid policies, nevertheless stop regularly to endorse Medicare for all, or single-payer health care, or better, socialized medicine. If you understand what’s wrong with a system that enables a power elite to use the state to impose its will, how in the world can you also call for putting all medical care under that elite’s control? Who do they think would ultimately run it? The people?

The only thing answer I can come up with is that the anti-woke left thinks socialized medicine is the only alternative to what we have now, which they call “the free market.” In fact, what we have is fascized medicine. My reference to fascism is not an emotional outburst; it’s technical Fascism as devised by Mussolini is a system of total government control of the production of goods and services with a facade of private ownership. A free market in health care couldn’t be more different from what we have today.

If we can disabuse the anti-woke left of its screwy notion about America’s health care and insurance system — by pointing out the many ways the government prevents the market from working — we might get them to abandon socialized medicine. One can only hope.

Sheldon Richman

Sheldon Richman

Sheldon Richman is the executive editor of The Libertarian Institute and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. He is the former senior editor at the Cato Institute and Institute for Humane Studies; former editor of The Freeman, published by the Foundation for Economic Education; and former vice president at the Future of Freedom Foundation. His latest books are Coming to Palestine and What Social Animals Owe to Each Other.

View all posts

Our Books

Recent Articles

Recent

It NDs Today: The Swiss Adopt a Lemon

The Gods help them in this very silly selection by the Swiss armed forces. ND is a negligent discharge where the pistol fires when you haven't asked it to. Most inconvenient. So the Swiss are buying a gun that technically failed the evaluation just to keep the...

read more
TGIF: “We’re” All Neocons Now

TGIF: “We’re” All Neocons Now

Apart from a few details, I never saw much difference between Trump's America First shtick and MAGA's chief foe, the neconservatives. It appeared to be merely a squabble over details, such as whether democracy or strongman rule abroad best served the so-called...

read more

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This