11/01/2005 10:10:47 am
Health Care Marxism. In the latest edition of Foreign Policy, there is an interesting article on future health care with the headline "A Prescription for Marxism":

"Karl Marx may have suffered a second death at the end of the last century, but look for a spirited comeback in this one. The next great battle between socialism and capitalism will be waged over human health and life expectancy. As rich countries grow richer, and as healthcare technology continues to improve, people will spend ever growing shares of their income on living longer and healthier lives. ... U.S. healthcare costs have already reached 15 percent of annual national income and could exceed 30 percent by the middle of this century?and other industrialized nations are not far behind. ... A little redistribution won?t suddenly transform the United States into a failed, Soviet-style ?workers? paradise.? But as health costs creep up to, say, 25 percent of national income, things get more complicated. Americans would see their tax bills more than double, while total taxes could reach 75 percent of many Europeans? income. With oppressive tax burdens and heavy state intervention in health?already the largest sector of the economy?socialism would have crept in through the back door."

As we get richer, we want to live longer and healthier lives. Nothing can be more important. Is then Marxism - government monopolies - the best way to achieve that? In Sweden, and most of Western Europe, we can see the results and the answer must be no. It is free enterprise, free choice and free competition that will - again, as ever - bring us what we demand. The battle of ideas goes on!
Read the entire article here - >