March 20, 2007, 7:43 pm

I was sitting here today, and was trying to discern why the government-run health care issue made me more nervous than other government welfare programs. I get ticked off, for example, about the horrendous rates of return (think negative interest rates) paid out by Social Security on what are nominally our retirement account premiums. But I don't get nervous. Why?

I think because unlike other welfare proposals that [just] cost us a ridiculous amount of money, the current plans for providing universal health care imply that my personal health care and health care options will get much worse. When government provided housing, my housing did not get worse. When government provided a ripoff retirement plan, my personal non-government retirement savings did not take a hit. In all these cases, we paid out tons of money to provide some terrible base-level services for the poor and the true-government-believers in the middle class, but my options did not get worse.

However, in the case of health care, most proposals on the table will very likely result not only in much higher taxes, but also in my personal health care options getting worse. The government will not want to provide multiple levels of service, and can't afford anything beyond "crappy", so as a result we will all end up with crappy service (Insert Rush song "trees" here). A lot of crap is written about how great all these other socialized medicine services are, but thousands of people travel from other countries to have medical procedures in the states, and about zero travel the other way. More on the topic of closing coverage gaps at the price of making your own personal care worse here. More on why these gaps are not as large as advertised here.

Update: Quick proof -- My chosen health plan is now illegal in Massachussetts