Obama’s campaign page states that he’s going provide “health care for all Americans.” And despite the current economic woes he and other supporters of Big Government continue to advance this issue. In fact, if anything, the economic fiasco may provide them good cover for enacting additional inroads for government oversight of healthcare. For example, the latest “stimulus” allocates over $1 billion for “comparative effectiveness research,” among other things.

According to some  Senators, “Incremental efforts will no longer suffice, and we cannot afford to wait any longer.” Yet not all are convinced. One OH-based paper laid it out in no uncertain terms:

Giving government bureaucrats a say on how doctors treat their patients, including what drugs or treatments to use, is downright scary. Major concerns, from the right to privacy to quality of life issues, have been raised over the health care provisions in the economic recovery bill.

There are two arguments against the continued socialization of healthcare and they both conclude the same thing: Government should get out of the way.

• For me personally, it’s the argument that no one has the right to use force to take my property. By saying someone has a “right” to healthcare implies that I have a “duty” to provide it. You would not walk up to me and demand my money. Yet backing universal healthcare denotes that you’re ok with other people who call themselves a “government” to take my money, keep some for themselves, and give the rest to you. Not too cool.
• Others are swayed by efficiency arguments — that, with any intervention, no matter how small, the dynamism of the healthcare industry is hampered, which means life-saving drugs and treatments are delayed or never developed. Which means people die.

I just finished reading Final Exits: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of How We Die by Michael Largo and in the “Child-Bed Fever” category Largo notes that a couple of hundred years ago, “So great was the loss of children that many chose not to name children until they had survived at least one year.” And that (in 1772) “Mothers died so frequently during birth-two hundred out of every one thousand births” (yes that’s no type, a full 20% died due to pregnancy complications).

This is a statistic — the higher rate of infant mortality in the States — often cited by those seeking even greater government regulation of the healthcare industry. And on its face the argument seems compelling. Yet that number is based on the number of babies born vs. the number alive a certain time period later. So if the babies aren’t ever born alive they aren’t counted. Fortunately, despite massive government intervention already, the U.S. is still leading the curve on medical science, which means babies are able to be removed from the womb earlier in the pregnancy (whereas in other countries they’re born stillborn). And while this is risky (a certain percentage will die), it’s better than the certainty of death — a fate that is almost assured in places with an even greater regulatory state. So, while it means a higher infant mortality rate it means more babies will live.

Further, do you really want the same people who manage the Post Office, the war in Iraq, and other boondoggles or to oversee your healthcare? I sure as hell don’t.

For more on this check out the Healthcare Workers for Liberty group and Who Owns You? overview at Bureaucrash Social. And also check out the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest and the work done by the good folks at Cato about universal healthcare. And if you want to get an idea of how bad socialized healthcare really is review the research done by the Fraser Institute.

Thanks to my friend Allison Gibbs for loaning me Final Exits.