Government (Public) School Systems A Forecast Of Health Care Coverage

As government school systems nationwide are drowning in deficits, many are responding in typical top-heavy bureaucratic fashion. Education is being rationed through proposals to shorten the school week to four days rather than five, or decreasing the number of school days in a year. Personnel that actually provide the supposedly highly valued services are being cut from the bottom. This is all despite the fact that public school systems generally spend more than twice the amount of money per student than private schools. In fact, those systems that spend the most often produce the least. As I read of the struggles of government school systems, I can't help but foresee the same issues occurring when the health care system is socialized.

The fundamental problem arises from the fact that middle class Americans virtually have all liberty taken from them and are saddled with a tremendous burden of subsidizing a system of epidemic waste. You see all net taxpayers have to pay for the costs associated with the government school system through taxation. If a household is of low income, they enjoy the fruits of the system while shouldering little to no cost of services rendered. If a household is affluent, despite having to pay for government school system services through their taxes, they shoulder the costs of paying for a better service through a private school (secular or otherwise). It is the middle class that shoulders an even greater burden, because if it were not for their mandated funding of the government system, paying for the better private school education could be more feasible. Health Care Reform is heading down the same path. Net taxpayers will subsidize the government run system. Those of sufficient affluence will be able to pay for better health care despite being forced to subsidize the government system. The middle class taxpayer will also subsidize the system, but will under go a struggle to pay for the better private system, or subject themselves to the government system. This system will operate without fear of competition due to the forced subsidizing of the government system by those who drive the private system that would compete with it. This inevitably fosters a culture of complacency and entitlement to the tax dollars that fund it. As we have seen, this has led to the bureaucratic waste that causes the plodding systems to be slow to respond to the pressures of operating a non-profit or not-for-profit business until a crisis is on the doorstep. Without fear of competition, complacency and entitlement almost always leads to an inferior product or service. We see it today with the our government schools, the postal system and we will inevitably see it in our new government health care system.