State Run Healthcare

For those who want state provided universal healthcare, this article is a must. It details the corruption following a program "created 40 years ago to provide health care for the poorest New Yorkers" which, as the NY Times claims, was "once a beacon of the Great Society era." (I didn't know the terms "beacon" and "Great Society Era" could possibly be put together in the same sentence. Leave it to the NY Times...) Yet even when the corruption is clear, as The New York Times notes is the case with Medicaid in New York, "State health officials [have] denied in interviews that Medicaid was easily cheated, saying that they were doing an excellent job of overseeing the program." Now, some would argue that the state should be providing healthcare for everyone as a given right. Can you even imagine how costly and ineffective that would be?

Affordable and adequate healthcare should be available for every American. But, as New York's Medicaid fiasco shows, it would be irresponsible to trust state bureaucracies to accomplish it. Surely there is a more effective, and less overbearing, alternative. The Great Society, in the end, would seem anything but Great. I'll choose economically-sensible efficiency over Johnson-esque "Greatness" anyday.