About time all these articles got consolidated. As the health care debate continues, these articles will gain prominence once again. Thanks to the smart people who make this happen.

I’m kinda surprised that George Reisman’s excellent pamphlet entitled The Real Right to Medical Care vs Socialized Medicine (or something like that, please forgive!) is not in this list. It was the single most clarifying piece I have read which explicitly and in a blow-by-blow fashion, shows how partial socialization of the healthcare market has led to inexorably rising prices.

Where’s Reisman’s article from the 1990s (reprinted recently)?

http://mises.org/daily/3613

A MUST read.

How Government Solved the Health Care Crisis

Medical Insurance that Worked — Until Government “Fixed” It

by Roderick T. Long

http://libertariannation.org/a/f12l3.html

@ Ned Netterville

“However, I’m not sure that slowing the nation’s momentum on the Road to Serfdom is a good idea, because the sooner we get there the sooner a real revolution against the nanny is likely to begin.”

I don’t know if I would be so optimistic about getting there sooner. Socialism “works” in Europe, and the majority of people there are content with it for the most part.

Socialism will work in the west because of its unfair advantage over the third world. Between unlibertarian globalization and IMF loan enslavement, the third world has no choice but to send most of its natural resources to our countries.

So even though a socialist society doesn’t produce jack, they can maintain a high quality of life by living off the backs of other people.

The reason this wealth transfer isn’t obvious is because imports/exports are measured in currency. If the price of these goods is kept superficially low, they will never show up if you measure the exchange in dollars.

In this way, I think there will be no revolution, because the people most hurt by government controls are on another continent. Granted, America will not have such a smooth ride becoming socialist as many European nations did, I think it is still inevitable.

Involuntary Medical Servitude
http://mises.org/daily/3657

100 Years of Medical Robbery
http://mises.org/article.aspx?Id=1547

Real Medical Freedom
http://mises.org/daily/1588

Prof. Blitzkrieg, in five short paragraphs that said it brilliantly, succinctly, aptly.
I too am dismayed at the impending, predictable reality — a further erosion of market principles, a new religion believing in so-called good government and objective arbiter of the game, and further marginalization of the “don’t tread on me” mindset.
I agree there will be a bumpy road ahead, but ultimately socialized medecine, and many other things, are a fait accompli.

What delayed the United States’ full transformation to government-operated and managed healthcare (which swept through EU) until now? It is the nation’s history, a fading but still remembered legacy, the roots of the revolution. I know this sounds less than scholarly, and is not meant to sound mystically silly, but there was always, for most citizens, a sense of individualism; it was steeped in the blood. It was in the upbringing of many Americans. That is what was the stalwart, much maligned inhibitor against the overstepping state.

Much of the citizenry, regardless of race and ethnicity, always heard the voice of the pioneer spirit. As bad as the educational system was, the frontier and log cabin imagery, the how-the-west-was-won mythology, the Ellis Island dream where the down-trodden man starts his own bakery, the children of slaves who became distinguished professionals, the “Bailey Building and Loan” standing up to Potter, liberty still had some meaning.
So there was some myth-making, to be sure. There was plenty of injustice along the way. The hucksters, the cheats, the pols, the manipulators of the system, thrived of course. But somehow, and plain as day, Americans recognized that the good guys seemed to win most of the time. I say, most of the time. The good guys, large and small, understood that things sometimes were messy; but there was freedom. With or without the wealth, most individuals knew they were free, viewed things like the IRS with skepticism (and fear) and knowingly embraced with glee the old joke, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.”

Walk the streets of New York, the broker with the Joseph A. Bank overcoat chats with the kiosk guy, wearing a Yankees Dugout jacket, selling cheese steaks on the corner. Oftentimes, neither one seems to envy the other’s profession; oftentimes there is mutual respect, a sense that in commerce, a few bucks exchanged for fast lunch implied their reality. They were free. Ingrained in each psyche was the tradition of self-reliance. They might not have been anarchists, but they still knew that their lives were their own, make or break; their responsibility was to themselves and their families. And government? That was the safety net of very last resort. Not the first, but the last.
It’s taken a couple of centuries, and while the Betsy Ross costumes can be seen at the grade schools on Flag day, the view of history, the rugged individualism wanes. That view is now considered quaint.
The “last resort” has moved up several notches.
Mistrust of government, which was part and parcel of the nation’s origin, practically written into a citizen’s genetic code, always provided the stiff-arm against the progressives.

In my view, it is the American history and legacy that helped delay the nonsense that would be universal healthcare. It is a legacy with many sins, but the shared vision was to be left alone. And it is why the U.S. trailed the socialized EU timeline, for many decades.
It would take time for the pendulum to shift.
And time came, and went.
But the stiff-arm grew tired.
The resolve weakened.
The outlook, the paradigm, the small government mentality has practically run its course. Universal healthcare is no longer considered succumbing to the state.

As the poster said, most people in EU are content with the way socialism “works.” The artificial protections and perversions of true free trade lend cover against the economic reality of government as provider.
And most in the U.S. will be content as well.

It is late and I ramble. I shake my head, jotting down these words, resigned to the reality.
Sadly, it comes.

Hmmm. I used to put a lot of faith in free market ideals. That is, until I realized a few decades ago that there are no really free markets and given our current political system there never will be. The powerful (and I don’t mean the government here) will always find ways to bend the market to their own purposes, whether through the collective action (ironic isn’t it?) of market-rigging virtual monopolies or through lobbying the political class to legislate for their benefit.

I became disillusioned with the pursuit of free market ideals during the Reagan era. Back then, the goal was to reduce regulation and red tape, to free up markets and to drastically reduce the size and scope of government. Some of those things did happen, but at the same time two successive Reagan administrations piled up record levels of public debt, largely through failing to follow tax cuts with spending reductions. Military spending ballooned under Reagan and represented basically a sustained transfer of wealth from the shrinking public purse to the shareholders of large defense industry corporations. I believe the ‘acid test’ for what constitutes a smaller government is that it taxes less AND spends less. It should be obvious that these are both necessary conditions, and yet, more than once in the last few decades, I have seen this free market mantra truncated by administrations which are quite willing to reduce taxes and some government spending, but always manage to find ways to justify very large increases in defense spending.

In summary, I believe that as long as it is the case that the defense budget is apparently the ‘sacred cow’ of federal program spending, we will never progress towards a system of smaller government with less taxation AND less spending.

Shelly and Matt both mentioned Roderick Long’s article so I thought some might find this interesting. It’s a 1910 NY Times editorial attacking lodge practice as “evil”, “hampering medical progress” and of “depriving a large number of worthy and capable practitioners of the fruits of dilligence”.

this is really the only article you need to read.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/opinion/27kristof.html

You forgot this one

“Compulsory Social Insurance” by Ludwig von Mises
http://mises.org/daily/3647