Evergreen Bolshevism

Once again, we are being promised a workers' paradise. The Utopians are proposing that a state that can't afford to fill its potholes will be able to double its budget and give everybody "free" health care. The "Committee for Universal Health Care in Washington State" is hoping that Washingtonians are more easily humbugged than Oregonians. In fact, the committee is hoping that Washingtonians have gotten dumber than they were in 2000 or 2002, when they withheld from its proponents enough signatures to place socialized medicine on the ballot.
The Committee for Universal Health Care was making its case for socialized medicine in Whitman County this last week. The group hopes to gather 250,000 signatures for its Initiative 842 by June 27, so that the measure can appear on the November ballot. And if it passes, it will only cost about 20 billion dollars or so.
It is ironic that even as the statues of communist dictators are being pulled down around the world, the metastases of their ideology continue to seek foundations upon which they might find purchase. One of their favorite malignancies is socialized medicine. Of course, its advocates are not honest enough to actually call it that. Socialism has a richly deserved bad reputation. The veil most preferred by modern comrades is universal health care.
And of course, once we have universal health care, everything will be just wonderful. Proponent Steve Megehee of Palouse pronounces that with the preventative care I-842 promises, health care costs might go down. Yes, and pigs might someday evolve feathers. What Megehee fails to consider is that people will always overuse a product that they don't have to pay for. If we offered universal vacuum cleaner insurance, people would march down to the government vacuum cleaner office and pick up a new vacuum cleaner every time the bag in the old one filled.
And according to Harry Abbott, the committee's treasurer, health care costs should not increase with this initiative because the state would be empowered to essentially dictate costs to providers. What he doesn't note is that when commodity prices are driven down artificially, then the supply of that commodity dries up. However one wishes to dress it up, health care is a commodity, just like hog bellies. If Harry Abbott were empowered to control hog belly futures, there would be no bacon.
The net effect of these two forces will be that we will have more and more people demanding more and more services from a shrinking supply. If these guys can insulate Washington from immutable economic principles, then we should use their power to propose I-843, and exempt Washingtonians from gaining weight after eating too much and exercising too little.
Has anything like this ever happened before? Why yes, it has. After he seized control of Russia, Vladimir Lenin declared that he would allow the Russian people to starve before he would permit a private market for food. And so he did.
Most of those who are uninsured are healthy young people for whom health insurance is a bad gamble. Such people not likely to use as much medical care as they would be forced to pay in taxes. Many others are small business owners who would rather be self-insured.
Much of this debate is driven by the notion that health care is so fundamental that nobody should have to do without it or even pay directly for it. But, if health care is so fundamental that it becomes a right, then shouldn't we get more basic and have universal food insurance, where the government is responsible for feeding everyone? Why not universal housing, where the government guarantees a roof over everyone's head? Maybe we should have universal clothing insurance.
Our left wing neighbors to the south had their chance to give themselves "free" health care and wisely turned it down by an overwhelming margin. As an oversized Berkeley or Greenwich Village, Oregon exhibited remarkable good sense last November. Outside of Seattle, Washington is a fairly sensible place too. And while part of me would like to see this horror on the ballot so that we can drive a stake through its heart once and for all, should the petition pass under my nose, I don't think I'll risk having it on the ballot and will decline to sign.