Healthcare Reform, part 1

I've had the privilege of discussing "Obama-care" with a few co-workers over the past few days which gave me the idea to assemble our thoughts (plus a few outside sources) on "free" public healthcare. Spoiler alert: I'm no fan of Obama-care. For the next few posts, I will bring up a pro-Obama-care point, and then refute them. Please note that I doubt that I'm going to bring any new ideas to the table here and much of this will simply be summarizing many good arguments that I've read/heard.

One common argument for government controlled healthcare is that "We are one of the only developed countries that doesn't offer free government controlled healthcare". Not to sound like captain obvious, but, NOTHING is free, someone has to pay for it. I'm going to discuss this point more in a later post, so I'll move on for now. Wayne Grudem refutes the larger point of this argument in Politics According to the Bible, quite well. He says:

"If a nation's government controls health care, then some rationing system will be necessary to decide who gets treatment and who does not, and there will be widespread instances of denial of care (for a government simply cannot provide an infinite supply of care for everyone who asks for it). While the quality of medical care in the United States in 2009 was the best that was available in the entire world (which is why foreign people who can afford to do so often come to the United States for specialized medical care), critics fear that Obama's plan will lead to rapid decline in the quality of care."

He goes on to quote Peter Ferrara who points out how numerous doctors are either refusing to treat Medicare/Medicaid patients or dropping the plans altogether because doctors and hospitals are paid 20-30%/30-40%, respectively, less than market rates for the care and services they provide. This ultimately results in a lower quality of care for these patients.

Additionally, a lot of other countries will throw you in prison for being a Christian, or chop of your head for talking smack on their leader. It doesn't mean they're right.

In summary, with a government run healthcare program, we would ultimately end up with a decrease in the quality of care. Due to the lack of incentive to provide top-notch care (remember, doctors are paid the same a fixed rate), medical advances will slow and the doctors will never find that pesky gene that makes you ugly.