It’s astounding to consider how many failed 1990s liberal arguments for socialized healthcare were recycled and repackaged for Obamacare twenty years later. The mainstream media of 1994 took huge leaps to praise Canada’s socialist health care system over America’s. Yet, this is clearly nothing more than a case of the grass being greener on the other side. Just look at the thousands of Canadians who stream across the border every year to receive care. According to a Canadian public policy think tank called the Frasier Institute, more than 52,000 Canadians went to the United States or other countries last year for health care that was not available to them because of Canada’s socialist health care system.
For many people who face these problems, it is a matter of life and death. British parents Chris Gard and Connie Yates know better than anyone what the end result can be of socialized medicine. Their son Charlie Gard was denied treatments that could have had as much as 56% chance of being effective simply because the hospital viewed health care as a tool of government, not an individual choice. Even when Chris and Connie raised more than $1 million to pursue treatments in the U.S. without any socialized aid, the British government wouldn’t allow them to make health care choices for their own son.
In the end, Charlie Gard was a victim of the very socialized healthcare system that liberals in the United States want to impose on us. The question then becomes very simple: When the United States is no longer a haven for free market health care, where can we go for life-saving treatments when the government refuses to serve us?
The grass is not greener on the side of socialized medicine. The socialist model leads to higher taxes, a one-size-fits-all approach, and eventually a complete abolishment of freedom of health care choice by the individual.
We must not lose sight of these fundamental principles as conservatives move forward in the debate on health care. The solution is not socialized medicine. The solution is ridding ourselves of the Obamacare nightmare and instituting free market principles of conservatism.
