Progressives Against Progress

Something is seriously missing from the health care debate. While the left is trying to pretend that they do NOT intend to use this as a gateway to socialized medicine and the right is trying to pretend that they are not using words like "death panel" to dissuade people from supporting it, I am looking at the lost dog in this fight.

The left likes to tell us how great the government health care is in socialist countries. They claim that they have access to all of the same technology as we do in our private system and that the only thing that will change is who is paying for it.

I know from experience that all of that is nonsense but for the sake of argument, let's pretend that the left is mostly right. The one other thing that will change is who gets paid.. and how much. So far the left should be with me, after all, even they admit that the government must be in charge of wages in order to control costs.

So now that the government has capped income potential and has forced an increase in the number of general practice physicians while raising their work load, the research end will suffer greatly. This is an effect that has been realized in every socialist country in the world... to some degree. So how is it that the small number of medical breakthroughs that originate from socialist countries are able to reach fruition despite their limited resources?

The answer brings us to the real trouble with the new American movement towards socialism. You see, medical breakthroughs (not unlike all other advancements) around the world are financed by the Private industry here in the good ol' USA.

Try to process this. If a Chinese company has an idea for research they must go to their government for the money. That government would be forced to deny that grant because the funds just do not exist to pay money, which is needed for basic health care, into research based on an idea. Enter the United States. The Chinese government will see the vast profit potential in developing a needed advancement and selling it in our free market which, in turn, will allow them to provide it to their own citizenry.

The proof is in the pudding, rather, history books. Prior to the creation of the free market capitalist system which is historically unique to our nation, technological advancements were moving at a snails pace. The risk/reward ratio exists, universally, within every decision we make. In the past (as well as in socialist societies today) there was very little opportunity for reward. Any popular development would just be absorbed by the monarch or spread back into the system leaving its inventor responsible for reproducing this product with little more than a thank you. In effect, one who advances society is only making more work for himself.

Our system put a stop to this idiocy. We were offered the promise of infinite rewards that only grew with risk. Even other countries have prospered through our freedom. They have produced things that could not have existed if not for our prosperity. This is why, as I've pointed out in the past, we moved from the 15,000 year reliance on the horse to today's incredible machinery within 3 generations of American free market prosperity.

So what if that promise of reward is taken away? What will happen to the world medical industry when there are no free markets to lean on for research money? What the left is proposing is putting a cap on the potential reward for those who would have been willing to take the necessary risks. By doing so, they will be putting a cap on the risk that people would be willing to take in pushing the envelope of advancement. The net result will be the same lack of progress that brought us from the bloodlettings of ancient Egypt, over 10,000 years ago, to the bloodlettings of the 18 century.

This is the unintended effect of progressivism. This is the house with no doors that they intend to build for us in order to protect us from what might be outside. This is today's Democratic monarchy, voted in by those who have no ambition in order to impede those who have it.

This principle applies to a lot more than health care. Please, think this through.