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By JOHN MAROCCHI ( i Rappahannock Neva Contributing Writer
In today’s media, health care reform shares almost equal billing with O.J. Simpson-and deserves a thousand times more.
The proposals before the Congress modify America’s Health Care System radically. So don’t waste time on details. Step back before we toss out the world’s best medicine, satisfying 80 percent of Americans, and be sure a radically changed one will be better.
The Clinton Plan and others like it require one critical shift, governments will control our health industry, not the free market, not consumers. That is socialism. Adding medicine’s 12-14 percent of GNP to the 42 percent now spent by governments and over half the U.S. economy is socialist.
Proponents of the reforms are frantic in assuring us, “It is not socialism” that it will only “harness and control free market forces.” Exactly! Once government is involved, every problem brings increased control.
“Socialism” is not just a scare word used by conservatives! It is a system of economic and social organization with one flaw; it does not work. It sounds wonderful, “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs,” so it appeals strongly, mainly to the young.
Socialism doesn’t work because of human nature. We are individualists, not collectivists. Our genetic makeup is not like that of ants or bees, which have collectivist societies. To wish we were, and to act on that hope is to mimic, in the Biblical phrase, “That foolish man, which built his house upon the sand.”
History records thousands of attempts over the centuries to create and maintain socialism. There has not been one lasting success. One effort occurred at Virginia’s founding. The Jamestown Colony began with socialism; everyone delivered the products of farming, fishing, hunting, weaving, etc., to the communal storehouse, settlers drew on the supplies as needed. For the first few years, Jamestown hovered on the edge of starvation. It was saved, in the words of a contemporary account, because “Sir Thomas Dale hath taken a new course... The new program., by Deputy Governor Dale was a great reform. Within a short time... the colony was flourishing.” Gov. Dale decreed that each colonist kept what he or she produced, trading voluntarily for their items.
Today there are many examples of socialism’s failure. That of the USSR is best known. It wasn’t military defeat that doomed the Soviets, lit was economic failure. An example, under the Czars Russia had a t free economy and was a major food exporter. Under communism/socia**Iism, she was unable to feed herself! * Same climate, same land, same people, better machinery and seed. The “System differed, and that led to fail: „ure.
Why? because socialism destroys incentives for productive people, leading to shrinking output. With less and less to divide, ultimately ev
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