Unless you are serving in the U.S. military, or receive health care benefits as an employee of the U.S. government, providing your health care is not a function of the federal government. Look through Article I Section 8, and a few other parts of the Constitution, at the powers delegated by the people to Congress. You will not find it there. Clauses 1 and 3 of Article I Section 8 have been greatly abused. I may write a future blog on that subject. Quite apart from that, why would anyone want government, which does so many things poorly, to take over health care. The more involved government becomes in it, the worse it gets. One of the things that drives up the cost of health insurance is government mandates. Typically, most, if not all, of the states require insurance companies to offer or include certain kinds of coverage. Every time you add another coverage, you force the cost to go up. If the state mandates coverage for mental health, or drug abuse treatment, the cost for everyone under that plan goes up, even though most will never need such coverage.

Government run health care destroys the quality and availability of health care. Many from other countries with such programs come to the U.S. for treatment, because they cannot get care in their home country. If the U.S. adopts a similar program, where will they go?  Where will we go?

Canada provides a good example. Canadian Mark Steyn reports that "public health care in Canada depends on private health care in the U.S." He cites the case of a Canadian woman who gave birth to quadruplets, in Great Falls, Montana. "Health officials checked every other neonatal intensive care unit in Canada, but none had space." So the woman flew 300 miles to the nearest U.S. facility in order to get care. He continues, "Everyone know that socialized health care means you wait and wait and wait--six months for an MRI, a year for a hip replacement, and so on. But here is the absolute logical reductio of a government monopoly in health care: the ten month waiting list for the maternity ward."

(Quotes from Mark Steyn from a lecture September 29, 2007, found in Imprimis, January 2008, Volume 37, Number 1; reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.)