Government Sadism = Third-Party Statism

Pure Fascism, government determines the "private sector".

"At 9.15 he rang for a nurse. Why did he ring for a nurse ? To guarantee a whole hour of uninterrupted privacy." from "The Hospital" by Paddy Chayefsky

Third-Party Statism :: SteynOnline
by Mark Steyn
National Review's Happy Warrior
October 29, 2013
There's a certain amount of lingo that comes with the provision of health care. In most developed countries, these words are "doctor," "nurse," "scalpel," "appendix," that sort of thing. But American health care has its own unique vocabulary: "co-pay," "HMO," "COBRA," "doughnut hole" . . . And we're always adding to it. The latest word is "exchanges." A mere twelve months ago "exchanges" were something to do with stocks or trying to get a larger size when you're given a too-tight thong for Christmas. Now, suddenly, it's the new health-care buzzword. You go to the federal website for the "exchanges," if you can get through, and they redirect you to the state websites for the "exchanges," if they're working. In Oregon, there are some 1,700 different rules that determine eligibility for the new "exchange." In Maryland, you're advised that "we may share information provided in your application with the appropriate authorities for law enforcement and audit activities." But we're used to all that by now, aren't we? The point is it's going to be complicated, time-consuming, and in breach of almost any elementary understanding of privacy. That's what makes it quintessentially American.

Most developed nations have a public health-care system and a private health-care system — of variable quality, to be sure, but all of them far simpler to navigate than America's endlessly mutating fusion of the worst of both worlds. Obamacare stitches together the rear ends of two pantomime horses and attempts to ride it to the sunlit uplands. Good luck with that. But we should remember that this disaster has been a long time incubating. The Democrats' objection to the pre-Obama "private" health system is that Americans wound up spending more than any other country for what they argued were inferior health outcomes. But the more telling number is revealed by Avik Roy elsewhere in this issue: In 2010 (in other words, before Obamacare), U.S. government expenditures on health care were higher than those in all but three other countries in the world. …  But in reality our so-called private system was a public system in all but name.

Why did we think otherwise? That gets back to the fundamental disconnect between America's national mythology and who Americans are as a people, or at least as a voting majority, in the 21st century. To reprise the Frenchman I quoted in this space a while back, "Americans love Big Government as much as Europeans. The only difference is that Americans refuse to admit it." And, because they refuse to admit it, they've wound up with a uniquely disastrous form of statism — a kind of statism on the sly, in which the zombie husks of private industry are conscripted as the front men for de facto nationalization. As part of the sky-is-falling rhetoric over the soi-disant shutdown, the media warned that, with federal employees furloughed, many American homebuyers would be delayed in moving into their new homes.

Tragic. But how did it come about that government bureaucrats are mixed up in your home closing? It's bad enough that the feds have a piece of so many mortgages, but it's far worse that, even if you walk into the realtor's office and plunk down a certified check for the entire cost of the house, you're still obligated to comply with all the federal HUD paperwork. In many key areas of life — your home, your health, your bank — Americans now enjoy considerably less freedom of maneuver than Europeans. They don't think of it like that because it's statism at one remove. But third-party statism is inevitably more cumbersome, bureaucratic, and expensive — summed up in those commercials for "Medicare supplement plans," patiently explaining why an already hideously unaffordable taxpayer-funded entitlement nevertheless apparently requires huge additional private expenditures in order to function.

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