Hillary Clinton has proposed a plan aiming to provide
universal health care for all Americans, aka socialized medicine. On the
surface one might ask, ?What could possibly be wrong with the government
providing health care to every one of its citizens? Who could possibly be
against an idea like that??

There are much greater principles at stake here. Most
Americans would be reluctant to oppose any legislation that might suggest
providing medical care for people who simply can?t afford it. But as Ronald
Reagan once said, ?One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or
socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It is very easy to disguise
a medical program as a humanitarian project.?

Ms. Clinton?s universal health care plan is nothing more
than another cog in the wheel of government encroachment on our lives. Back in
1994, Bill and Hillary Clinton attempted to implement a similar plan of
socialized medicine. Their plan would have created the biggest government
bureaucracy in the world, calling for unprecedented tax increases, resulting in
the government?s control of nearly one-seventh of the U.S. economy. The
Clintons based their plan on the premise that government knows best ? not the
people, not doctors and not businesses.

Where does this road end? How far will government go? It is
naive to believe that government will simply stop expanding into every walk of
life when socialized medicine has been implemented.

The health care system is in dire need of reform, but the
answer lies in more choice and more competition, not in the government nanny
deciding what is best for us. Besides the broader philosophical principles at
stake, Ms. Clinton?s plan ? and socialized medicine? in general ? would
cripple the health care field as has been seen in Canada and Europe.

Sure, we can have health care for everyone ? if we?re
willing to give up the quality of health care we enjoy right now and hand over
even more of our paycheck to Uncle Sam in the form of taxes. With a lack of
competition in the medical field, there will be less research, innovation and
advancement in medical technology. Less of our best and brightest young people
will go into the medical field, which will undoubtedly result in universal, but
second-rate health care. Additionally, part of Ms. Clinton?s plan makes it
mandatory for businesses to provide health insurance to employees. Making this
a requirement will only cripple small businesses that are already hard-pressed
to compete against larger corporations.

The quality of health care available in this country is the
envy of the world. The ability of patients to choose and switch doctors, as
well as doctors? ability to choose where they want to practice or how many
patients they want to have, would all be controlled by the government, and we
will all become just another number in a system.

Even worse, with the largest governmental bureaucracy in the
world running our health care system, we will see all of the inefficiencies
inherent with bureaucracies. There will be shortages, rationing and waiting
lists, and Americans will have less choice about who their doctors are. Under
Ms. Clinton?s plan, patients would have a limited choice of several doctors
from whom they could choose, so essentially a person?s choice of doctors,
procedures and medicines will all be controlled by the government.

In the end, socialized medicine will produce yet another
invasion of government into the lives of Americans. It promotes even more
dependence on government. Ms. Clinton?s plan to redistribute health care from
the rich to the poor, as she terms it, is actually more, as Stephen Warshawsky
of The American Thinker states, a redistribution of power ?from the people to
the government.?

Socialized health care is contrary to the fundamental
principles on which this country was founded. If we are still truly committed
to liberty, self-reliance, individualism and limited government, then we must
reject socialized medicine. Otherwise we will soon find that this was just the
first step toward more and more reliance on government and more and more
federal programs invading every aspect of life in this country.

Joe Trovato ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in
journalism.

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