798 views | Posted by Michael Island on July 25th, 2009 | Bookmark This Post
If you just get your facts from the mainstream and cable media it may seem like government-run health care is a good idea, but if you take the time and make the effort to seek out the truth you’ll find out otherwise. The first fact you’ll discover is there’s a lot of great information out there that explains why socialized health care is immoral and — like all things immoral — also impractical.
Here’s a sorted list of links to and descriptions of articles, blog posts, websites, and other media to get you started. The list isn’t intended to be exhaustive and the links are in no particular order. Also, the categories are somewhat arbitrary, since most links would fit in more than one, but I tried to organize them for the sake of clarity and ease of navigation. The idea is to have all of this information in one place for those new to the issue or those wishing to break through all the propaganda and other nonsense. I’ll probably add more links as I find them. If you know of any, please add them in the comments.
The basics of health care reform
Health Care is Not a Right
The best case against socialized medicine. It’s on this page twice. If you only read one article linked from this page, it should be this one. It’s an extensive, philosophical speech given by Leonard Peikoff on how socialized medicine “is not a case of noble in theory but a failure in practice; it is a case of vicious in theory and therefore a disaster in practice.”
American Health Care: Essential Principles and Common Fallacies
“This essay provides a brief guide to the essential political, economic and moral principles on which all health policy must be based. There is a special emphasis on the role of unique American values in maintaining these principles.”
The Proper Principles of Health Care Reform
An essay on how government intervention or “universal” health care is not the proper way to reform our health care system. “Only a plan… based on the American values of individual liberty, personal responsibility and non-coercive free markets, can provide us with the best medical care that the thought and effort of Americans can create.”
What You — and Your Employer — Probably Don’t Know About Your Health Plan: The History of HMOs
An article from 1999 written by Scott Holleran in which he explains how state-managed health care plans were intended to work in theory and how they actually work in practice. “From their beginnings, HMOs were designed—by Democrats and Republicans—to eliminate individual health insurance.”
Thirty-Nine Fallacies About Health Care
“Common fallacies about American health care that are often used to confuse and obstruct a proper approach to medical care. Facts and reasoned arguments are provided as tools to help prevent these fallacies from damaging the system of medical care required in a free society.”
Government-run health care is anti-freedom
Health Insurance Industry Sells Its Soul to the Devil
An article by Paul Hsieh on how health insurance companies, by making agreements with the government, are going to take the rest of us down with them. They seemingly get a guaranteed market, but at a steep price: their freedom to run their businesses as they see fit. “No business can survive long when the government forces it to sell $2,000 worth of services, but only allows it to charge $1,000.”
What I Won’t Stand For
A blog post written by Stella Zawistowski. “Obama may be upset that healthcare is expensive. Okay, so Americans don’t like it. But he will not succeed at wishing away the fact that healthcare costs money.”
Insurers Offer to Start Charging Healthy People More
A blog post by Stella Zawistowski on how if health insurance is lowered for sick people it must be raised for healthy people. “Let’s not shackle the healthy to pay for the sick.” And here’s another post on insurers raising the premiums for men.
Why Unbridled Democracy is a Bad, Bad Thing
A blog post by Stella Zawistowski explaining how “free” health care is anti-freedom. “When healthcare is ‘free,’ you can bet Americans are going to want even more tests, procedures, and drugs — and then it’s not you and your doctor, but a bureaucrat, who will decide whether your care is necessary or not.”
Obamacare’s Attack on Doctors
An article by Richard E. Ralston on how those who want to increase government power to rule American medicine are adding physicians to their list of “enemies of the people.”
The Forgotten Man of Socialized Medicine and Us
A blog post by Debi Ghate stressing a doctor’s right to practice medicine free from government intervention and patient’s right to purchase health care on a free market.
ABC News aka OBC News
A blog post by Edward Cline on how far Obama’s administration is willing to go to impose socialized health care on the nation and avoid any debate with the help of the major news organizations.
Obamacare Could Kill You
An article by David Catron on how socialized health care means the government makes life and death decisions best left up to patients and their physicians.
The Unfree Market in Health Care
A short article by Brian Schwartz showing the current health care market is shackled by government controls. “Sure, there is a market, that is, people exchange goods and services. But it is by no means free from political mandates, controls, and prohibitions. That is what a “free market” is supposed to be free from, where people interact on a voluntary basis.”
Our Fascist Health Care System
An editorial by Richard E. Ralston illustrating the fascist elements of health care in our allegedly free country. “American medicine is constrained in a Byzantine web of regulations, legislation and bureaucracy. It is a mess, and the status quo cannot be defended. It should be reformed.”
Death and Taxes and the Motive of Government-Managed Health Care
An article by Richard E. Ralston on how government intervention in health care is really about making us government dependents. “When you file your taxes this year, consider this certainty: As an ever-increasing amount of our taxes are appropriated for government spending on health care, tax policy ultimately has little to do with attempting to improve the quality and affordability of health care. It is the other way around: Government involvement in our health is usually an excuse to serve a completely different political agenda.”
DeMint’s Health Handouts Violate Liberty
A memo from Linn and Ari Armstrong to Republican Senator Jim DeMint saying that his tax-subsidized health welfare plan is not an example of “free-market reform.”
How Much Is a Year of Your Life Worth?
An article by David Catron on how rationing requires the government to arbitrarily assign a numerical, dollar value to an individual human life, and how the ObamaCare promoters are ignoring the issue rather than debating it.
The Federal Health Care Muggers
An article by Paul Hsieh presenting a good overview of how government-run health care is a threat to individual rights. “This plan would violate individual rights on a massive scale by imposing new mandates on individuals, businesses, and insurers, forcing Americans to cede control over their health care to the government.”
Government-run health care is impractical
Universal Health Care and the Waistline Police
An article by Paul Hsieh on how universal health care leads to a nanny state contrary to American ideals. “Other countries with universal healthcare are already restricting individual freedoms in the name of controlling health costs.”
The Irrational Argument for Rationing Health Care
Socializing health care leads to rationing, which means the government decides how much of a good or service you are allotted. In this blog post Don Watkins shows how Obama’s supporters distort the meaning of “rationing” in order to promote their agenda.
A Gross Misunderstanding
A blog post from ReasonPharm, written by Stella Zawistowski. “Don’t make the Gross evasion of thinking that government intervention can solve America’s healthcare problems. What we need to do is remove the government interventions that caused those problems in the first place.”
Lovely… Until You Get Sick
A blog post by Stella Zawistowski on what would happen if a fee-for-service payment system was replaced by a set yearly fee. “This idea is supposed to discourage doctors from performing unnecessary tests and procedures… Isn’t it obvious what ELSE it will discourage doctors from doing…?”
How Obamacare Will Change Your Life
An excellent article by David Catron on what life will be like if health care is socialized. Be sure to read the reader comments, too, and you’ll learn even more scary facts.
The ‘Public Plan’ Would Be The Only Plan
An article from The Wall Street Journal by Scott Harrington showing how a government-ran health insurance plan would render the free market meaningless. “In reality, equal competition between a public plan and private plans would be impossible. The public plan would inexorably crowd out private plans, leading to a single-payer system.”
Reject Political Control of Health Care
An article by Linn and Ari Armstrong explaining how government intervention is the cause of our health care problems, not the solution. “The problems with American medicine arise from decades of political interference in medicine — so of course Obama wants to expand such interference.”
Mandatory Health Insurance: Wrong for Massachusetts, Wrong for America
An extensive article from The Objective Standard written by Paul Hsieh detailing how Massachusetts’ mandatory health insurance plan was intended to work and why it failed. “Although advocates of the Massachusetts plan claimed that it would lower health care costs and achieve universal coverage, it has done neither.”
How to Lie with Statistics — Again
A good article from The Denver Post written by David Harsanyi showing how politicians use “statisticulation” to promote their agendas. He takes the fact that 46 million Americans are without health insurance and dives deeper into who these people really are and why they don’t have insurance to prove his point.
AAPS Mythbusters Archive
The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a voice for private physicians, has a list of articles debunking myths touted by supporters of socialized health care. The list refutes such widespread beliefs as: public plans save on administrative costs, life expectancy is longer in countries on universal health care systems, and individuals can keep their current plans if they wish.
MassHealth Has Higher Claim Denial Rate Than Commercial Insurers
A blog post by Brian Schwartz citing a Boston Globe article showing that Massachusetts’ mandatory health insurance system denies more claims than the commercial insurers do in the state.
The Human Face of Socialized Medicine
A blog post from Galileo Blogs illustrating how socialized medicine kills people who are sick because they have to wait in lines before they are treated. He provides a letter from a reader who tells how his father-in-law died from lung cancer while waiting for months to be treated in Canada’s socialized health care system.
Of NICE and Men
An opinion editorial from The Wall Street Journal explaining how the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence keeps health care costs down. “What NICE has become in practice is a rationing board. As health costs have exploded in Britain as in most developed countries, NICE has become the heavy that reduces spending by limiting the treatments that 61 million citizens are allowed to receive…”
Government Health Care Organizational Chart
You really want to see how government-run health care will work in practice, check out Organizational Chart of the House Democrat’s Health Plan.
The Incremental Assault on Health Care
“On a free market, individuals—even most unhealthy ones—could afford routine medical bills; the principal role of health insurance would be to cover unpredictable catastrophic expenses. But Medicare, Medicaid, and their associated price controls have forced medical costs so high that even routine expenses have become forbidding.”
In Search of a Fairy tale
A blog post by Stella Zawistowski using a fairy tale to illustrate how Obama and other “universal” health care supporters are at war with reality.
Medical Care Confusion
An article written by Thomas Sowell questioning whether health care will be better or worse if government takes over. “None of the people who are trying to rush government-run medical care through Congress before we have time to think about it are pointing to Medicare, Medicaid or veterans’ hospitals as shining examples of how wonderful we can expect government medical care to be when it becomes ‘universal.’”
Obama’s Magical News Conference for Socialized Medicine
An article written by Thomas Sowell on how Obama and socialized health care supporters must distract us from the reality of such a system in order to promote it. “The big trick for the president is to convince the public that he can add tens of millions of people to his government medical care plan without raising the costs. But an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office showed that Obamacare would in fact raise the costs and increase the deficit by billions of dollars.”
The Hidden Costs of National Health Care
A good editorial by Glenn Reynolds. “Lots of people are beginning to question the cost of President Barack Obama’s healthcare “reform” plans, and with good reason… But there’s another cost that isn’t getting enough attention. That’s the degree to which a bureaucratized healthcare system will squash medical innovation just as we reach a point where dramatic progress is possible.”
Government-run health care is immoral
Health Care is Not a Right
A speech given by Leonard Peikoff on how socialized medicine “is not a case of noble in theory but a failure in practice; it is a case of vicious in theory and therefore a disaster in practice.”
How Not to Fight Against Socialized Medicine
A condensed version of a speech given by Ayn Rand urging doctors to fight against socialized medicine on moral grounds. “The pursuit of his own productive career is—and, morally, should be—the primary goal of a doctor’s work, as it is the primary goal of any self-respecting, productive man.”
Health Care reform Versus Universal Health Care
An article by Paul Hsieh offering three basic facts Americans should know about universal health care. “Health care is a need, not a right. There is no such thing as a “right” to a house … or a tonsillectomy.”
Albertoli: Immorality of Socialized Medicine
A short essay by Roxanne Albertoli on the moral issues underlying the health care debate reprinted in a blog post at We Stand Firm.
A free market is the only solution to health care reform
Mr. Burd Goes To Washington
An article from The Wall Street Journal written by Kimberley A. Strassel explaining how the CEO of Safeway, Steve Burd, has employed free market principles to keep health insurances costs down. Mr. Burd’s conclusion: The “cure for today’s ills is simply removing the obstacles to a free health-care market.”
Free Market Toolkit
A resource page from Americans for Free Choice in Medicine on how to manage your health care in our current heavily-regulated system. “Recently there have been some developments in the marketplace providing consumers with important new tools in finding affordable health care.”
Links to blogs and websites devoted to promoting free market health care reforms
Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine
FIRM holds that the only moral and practical way to obtain medical care is that of individuals choosing and paying for their own medical care in a capitalist free market.
Association of American Physicians and Surgeons
“Since 1943, AAPS has been dedicated to the highest ethical standards of the Oath of Hippocrates and to preserving the sanctity of the patient-physician relationship and the practice of private medicine.”
Americans for Free Choice in Medicine
AFCM is “America’s only grass-roots organization devoted to individual rights in medicine.” “AFCM promotes the philosophy of individual rights, personal responsibility and free market economics in the health care industry.”
ReasonPharm
A blog by Stella Zawistowski devoted to the health care industry. “Health care in America is in desperate need of a strong dose of reason. This blog presents a rational, Objectivism-based view of medicine.”
Patient Power
A blog by Brian Schwartz from The Independence Institute covering various aspects of the health care industry from a capitalist perspective. “Because your health care is too important to be left to politicians.”
Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights
The Ayn Rand Center’s page devoted to issues in health care. Here you’ll find opinion editorials, audio, video, and links on every aspect of health care from a capitalist perspective.
Videos illuminating heath care issues
Health Care is Not a Right by Leonard Peikoff
Yaron Brook from the Ayn Rand Institute explaining health care is not a right
ObamaCare: Yay or Nay? The Truth About Canada!
Health Rations and You
Yaron Brook’s Call to Action — July 2009
Yaron Brook discussing Obama’s health care plan at PJTV
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