Garbanzo Toons

Economy of Size

On my ten minute commute home every day, the radio goes between Michael Medved, Ed Schultz, and "classic" rock. Friday, I switched over to Ed in the middle of another blast of Health Care blather. Ed and a caller were discussing states that are running huge deficits, that are basically broke, the coffers are empty and the taxpayers tapped out, partially due to generous health care benefits to citizens of those states. They are spending too much money. I believe two of the states are California and Massachusetts. While admitting that rising health care costs have damaged the financial viability of those states, their solution was the federal government running the health care show. Why? Because the states are too small to handle this matter. You need the feds to do the job, because only the federal government is big enough.

Now maybe I've become too much of a radical right wing ideologue, but I fail to see how the federal government would do any better than the states in holding down costs. And California too small? The economy of California is larger than almost all of the countries in the world. There are only six other nations besides the United States that have larger economies than California.

If I understood and remember what they were saying, and if I didn't miss other, more intelligent points, they're running out of plausible reasons as to how the government can do better than the private sector in providing health care and health insurance. (That reminds me of another bit of stupidity - the need for a "public option" because it would end the "monopoly" of private insurers.)

Labels: Ed Schlutz, Universal Health Care

posted by Harry @ 7:59 PM