Land of the Free

I am often asked to speak at different venues about our healthcare system.  Just this last weekend, I was privileged to speak at the Awakening 2013 on the perils of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as "Obamacare."  My efforts in these talks are to show the economic impossibility of adopting such a measure.  Our elected officials have a long history of initiating programs that provide things to the people that never seem to work out exactly the way it was planned.  Our Medicare system, when inaugurated in 1965, was projected to cost nine billion dollars in 1990; the actual cost was over ten times that, at 110 billion dollars.  Currently, the cost is over 500 billion dollars, and the program is rapidly approaching insolvency.  Obamacare then takes this bankrupt system and robs it of another 700 billion dollars.  The real problem here is that politicians can pass legislation now with enormous costs later, when they will no longer be in office.  The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is now the largest item in the Federal budget;  the politicians who legislated this in 1965 are far removed from the scene.  Likewise, the long-term disastrous consequences of Obamacare will not be experienced by those who pushed the law through. 

So I can show you with math and tables and charts why something like this is unworkable, and I can do it using the government's own numbers.  The harder task is to try and explain to the average American why getting something for free from the government is a bad thing.  They assume that if the government provides it, the government can afford it.  They really aren't concerned about how the government pays for it.  There are really basically only three choices.  The government can raise money through taxes, which takes money now from productive workers.  The government can borrow money, which is a lien on future taxpayers' earnings.  Finally, the government can print money, which leads to inflation and robs every American of their wealth.  These simple concepts seem to be beyond many of the voters who choose to elect politicians who will reward them for their vote with free things, whether it be a health insurance subsidy, food stamps, cell phones, or housing.  For some, they may understand that increased taxation may harm others, but that doesn't change the fact that they are getting something for free. 

As Milton Friedman famously said, "There's no such thing as a free lunch."  For one person to receive something for free, something must be taken from someone else. Only our government has that power, to forcibly take from one to give to another.  The person who is taxed loses the freedom to choose what they would do with their money and what they would spend it on.  The giving of "free" things actually leads to a loss of economic "freedom."  The United States is tenth on the list of economically free countries, behind others such as Singapore, Hong Kong, and even Chile.  Money given to the government for public use must be taken from the hands of those in the private sector, and those people would have used it for other uses, including spending for goods that are produced, thereby creating jobs in other people's businesses, creating jobs in their own businesses, and even giving to charity. 

Eventually the socialized redistribution fails. Margaret Thatcher, the former Prime Minister of Britain who passed away earlier this month, stated, "Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess.  They always run out of other people's money."  Over and over again we have seen the failure of socialism.  Yet there is a powerful drive for this redistribution.  A Gallup poll last week showed that over half of Americans would like to see wealth redistributed by governmental taxation.  The history of socialism and redistribution seems to repeat itself endlessly.  The driving forces are a public that demands free things at the expense of others and politicians who provide those things in return for voter support.  Both ignore the economic consequences, either because they do not comprehend them or they disregard them as not affecting them.  The recipient does not feel affected by the higher taxes on another, and the politician will be absent when the redistribution program fails. 

It can be demonstrated that current healthcare policy is already mathematically bankrupt and unsustainable.  It can be reliably shown that socialist redistribution ultimately fails.  Both demonstrations do not convince those would continue these approaches.  What else is left? 

Nowhere in the Word of God is there support for such an approach.  The Bible is full of admonitions to help the poor, the needy, the widows and orphans.  This is to be done with a generous and charitable heart.  Those in need are to pray to God for their needs, and the people of God are to give freely to them. God then blesses both parties.  He blesses those whose needs were met.  As for the giver, Acts 20:35 tells us that Jesus said, "It is more blessed to give than to receive."  Proverbs 22:9 states, "He who has a generous eye will be blessed, for he gives of his bread to the poor."  When we turn this business over to the government, this whole three-way relationship is broken, and all the blessings turn into entitlements and obligations.  The radio host Bernard Meltzer said, "Blessed are those who give without remembering.  And blessed are those who take without forgetting."

The socialist redistribution scheme promises free things, but takes freedom away from the giver, the recipient, and the country at large.  The recipient is now in bondage to the state, dependent on it for his needs.  The taxpayer is in bondage, surrendering his economic freedom.  And the government now removes economic choices from all of us, rendering our economy less free.  Most people these days will trade their freedom for security.  The land of free things is not the land of the free.