The Menace of Socialized Medicine and the Promise of Cheap Health Care

Rising Costs Are Becoming a Major Problem in Health Care

Ideally everyone wants to have cheap health care.  If we do an unbiased assessment of the current medical establishment, we see that rising costs are becoming a major problem in health care.  In America, the majority of expenses are paid for by third party entities, such as the government or an insurance company, and not by the people consuming those goods or using those services.  Medicare expenditures have rapidly shot up because of third-party payments and cheap health care is becoming harder to attain for almost all parties across the spectrum.  As a result, health and wellness tourism in the many parts of the developing world has begun attracting patients from countries like the US and the UK.

Cheap Health Care: An Impossible Dream

The hidden fallout of socialized or government-sponsored medicine is that when doctors and patients spend other people's monies, they do not want cheap health care.  They do not worry about the costs or number of services consumed.  If people get something for free, they consume more than what they would if they had to pay for it.  America's entire net worth is far less than the current costs for Medicare.  Medicare and single-payer system have the potential of bankrupting the country.  In 2015, Medicare will begin to run out of money.  Beneficiaries of Medicare pay almost nothing out of their own pockets for health care.  Single-payer health care relies on government control and rationing.  The principal problem of single-payer system is it tends to increase government involvement and encourages government bureaucracy.

Health and Wellness Tourism in the World to Flourish in the Coming Years

Senator Coburn talked about the solutions and viable alternatives to the problem.  He stressed re-establishing an individual’s ownership of health care, giving priority to prevention, and making cost and quality transparent.  Socialized medicine is one of the reasons why rising costs are becoming such a major problem in health care. But by taking advantage of advanced medical infrastructure in countries like Thailand, India, or Costa Rica, patients from the States can receive quality care at affordable prices. Health and wellness tourism to the developing world is quickly becoming a viable option for thousands of companies, patients, and insurance firms that lack the financial resources to help keep the current medical industry afloat in the US.

Source: Stan Gudmundson / Rushford, Minn, “Guest View: Let’s call it what is - socialized medicine,” Winona Daily News, October 23, 2006