Just Being Social

My liberal friend sits down next to me and I ask him what he thinks about the Supreme Court's decision to uphold Obamacare. At first, he launches into his amateur lawyer act and begins dissecting John Roberts' opinion. I cut him off and restate that I just want to know what he thinks about it being upheld, not the reasoning why. I know he's a big liberal who supported Hillary 4 years ago, but I want to know if he likes the basic idea of socialized medicine. Of course you can't really say "socialized medicine" when you talk about it because liberals will then accuse you using that term in order to scare people. They much prefer their own euphemisms like "universal health care" or "single payer." Liberals are good at identifying terms that usually draw a poor reaction, and then changing them to a much nicer sounding word. (Examples? abortion - freedom of choice, illegal alien - undocumented worker, racial preferences - diversity, giving free stuff away - providing access.)

"It's great" he says. "My wife's a nurse and she says that they need to wrestle control of health care away from the doctors." Apparently she is of the opinion that doctors are at the heart of why an adequate amount of care is not being delivered. She is convinced they are the problem, but I don't see how Obamacare helps that aspect. So I pose the question in a more basic way. "Do you think that socialized medicine will be a good thing?"

"What are you talking about? We're not headed for socialized medicine, that's not happening here."

"It's not? I know it's not happening tomorrow, but you've got to see that's where it's headed don't you? All the incentives are designed to make businesses drop private health insurance as a benefit for workers, and force them into the public option. And the funny thing about monetary incentives is they usually work. Businesses are not going to quibble over morality when there is money on the table. First, providing health insurance for their employees is not their obligation, legally or morally. It has evolved that way out of a desire to compensate employees in a creative way. But they are under no obligation to continue doing so, and with all that money as motivation, they will have no problem doing as the government wishes. But the basic point is that once they put all the private insurers out of business, government will be in complete control of all medical payments and therefore in complete control of all health care. They will be deciding who gets what treatment, and who doesn't. The same people who run the Post Office, the IRS and the EPA will be running health care entirely. Doesn't that concern you?"

"Naw, that's not what's happening. We aren't headed for socialized medicine,"