The teat squawkers are in full-throated mode in North Carolina. Newspaper editors and healthcare providers are demanding our legislators take the Obama bribe, and accept $15 billion in “free government money.” Of course, that would expand our welfare rolls by approximately 550,000 people. But hey, that money is free! According to a number of physicians it would be plain stupid not to accept such a generous “gift.”
Dr. Charles van der Horst, an AIDS researcher at professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, said it makes no sense to surrender $15 billion the federal government would pay for the expanded coverage. An outside consultant for the state Department of Health and Human Services said the expansion would generate 23,000 net jobs through 2021 and annual real disposable income of $1 billion.
"And what do you think the voters will say that we're turning this down?" Van Der Horst asked, adding Republican elected leaders in other states support the expansion. Without the expansion, North Carolina hospitals will continue to have pay for charity care in emergency rooms, the cost of which will keep getting passed along to patients with private insurance, he said.
"It's morally wrong to not expand Medicaid," said Dr. Mohan Chilukuri with Durham Family Medicine. "It fiscally doesn't make any sense."
An outside
consultant hired by the state claims expanding Medicaid will generate 23,000
jobs and provide an ANNUAL REAL DISPOSABLE INCOME OF $1 BILLION? Bullshit!
That money has to come from somewhere, either through taxation,
borrowing, or worse printing, which in itself is tax. And let’s disabuse ourselves that this is “real
disposable income.” This is not real
wealth; it’s manufactured. Sooner or
later we as country are going to pay for the sins of the Federal Reserve.
Another problem
with the expansion of Medicaid, or should I say “free healthcare” is that it
distorts the market. The adverse effect
is higher cost of goods and services. When
people believe something is “free” they’re going to abuse it. The question remains, when does it stop? Llewellyn H. Rockwell answered that for us in
his essay Subsidizing Sickness. Here is
an excerpt:
Thus
spake Mises. He is observing that there is a moral hazard associated with
socialized and subsidized medicine. Because there is no clear line between
sickness and health, and where you stand on the continuum is bound up with
individual choice, the more medical services are provided by the state as a
part of welfare, the more the programs reinforce the conditions that bring
about the need to make use of them. This one insight helps explain how
socialized medicine takes away the incentive to be healthy, and maximizes the
problem of overutilization of resources. Hence, socialized medicine must fail
for the same reasons all socialism must fail: it offers no system for
rationally allocating resources, and instead promotes overutilization of all
resources, ending in bankruptcy.Considering the federal government’s spending, that prediction isn’t far away.
Source: http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2013-02-12/doctors-nurses-ask-nc-lawmakers-to-grow-medicaid
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