WEBVTT NOTE Socialized Health Care and the Anti-Capitalistic Mentality: International Evidence 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.640 All right, so I will talk about socialized health care and anti-capitalist mentality, international evidence. 2 00:00:07.640 --> 00:00:15.560 And the most important is that I think that the enemies of private enterprise, enemies of capitalism, 3 00:00:15.560 --> 00:00:26.480 they believe that we need to have a health care reform because health care expenses are going pretty fast up. 4 00:00:26.480 --> 00:00:32.960 that today we're spending about 16% of our gross domestic product on health care, on health care. 5 00:00:32.960 --> 00:00:44.960 Well, I would say that just everything is in my article, in my report, so you can consult with details over there and it's on the website. 6 00:00:44.960 --> 00:00:53.040 But what I want to say is that it's 16% a lot. I mean, health care is pretty important for people. 7 00:00:53.040 --> 00:00:56.600 and it's definitely something which is called normal good. 8 00:00:56.600 --> 00:00:58.240 That means when your income are going up, 9 00:00:58.240 --> 00:01:01.760 then you demand more of it, more of it, not less of it. 10 00:01:01.760 --> 00:01:04.240 I just looked, for example, at the Russian statistics 11 00:01:04.240 --> 00:01:08.440 because I will do some data from Russia. 12 00:01:08.440 --> 00:01:11.560 And in Russia, they spend 12% on booze. 13 00:01:11.560 --> 00:01:16.560 I mean, is that kind of, should we save on healthcare 14 00:01:17.600 --> 00:01:20.000 a little bit and do that? 15 00:01:20.000 --> 00:01:23.000 So I would say that it's difficult to say 16 00:01:23.000 --> 00:01:29.920 whether it's a whether it's too much or not because because if you will look why 17 00:01:29.920 --> 00:01:34.760 this is happening in most cases I was I would I would argue that it's because of 18 00:01:34.760 --> 00:01:40.440 quality changes and the technological advances how much would you spend on hip 19 00:01:40.440 --> 00:01:47.320 replacement or bypass surgery in 1950 not much so there was no such thing at 20 00:01:47.320 --> 00:01:52.240 that time and so today we're spending so much I think because we want to live 21 00:01:52.240 --> 00:01:59.240 of Money, The Theory of Money and State, The Theory of Money and State, The Theory of Money 22 00:02:22.240 --> 00:02:32.240 There is no other way to save, either by squeezing providers or denying care. There is no other way to save. I mean, how else can you save? There is no such a thing. 23 00:02:32.240 --> 00:02:38.240 And so, we can see that we are spending more because we are the richest ones. 24 00:02:38.240 --> 00:02:46.240 Then we have these people who are trying to drag us into medical socialism. 25 00:02:46.240 --> 00:03:16.240 The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was signed into law by Barack Obama on March 23, 2010, and there is a writer also, Healthcare and Education Reconciliation Act, a writer to that law, which effectively nationalized and completely kind of without any public transparency, completely nationalized students' loan industry on the way to nationalization of 26 00:03:16.240 --> 00:03:33.240 of Healthcare. Healthcare industry, if you will take, also if you will put together industry of medical devices and pharmaceutical industry, it's 24% of our gross domestic product. So it's one-fourth of our economy can be nationalized just like that. 27 00:03:33.240 --> 00:03:38.880 and President Obama I think knows what he's doing because he openly admits that he said 28 00:03:38.880 --> 00:03:43.320 I think there can be some legitimate concerns on the part of private insurers 29 00:03:43.320 --> 00:03:48.160 that if any public plan is simply being subsidized by taxpayers endlessly 30 00:03:48.160 --> 00:03:53.360 that over time they can compete with the government just printing money 31 00:03:53.360 --> 00:03:57.360 he is admitting that pretty, pretty openly, yes 32 00:03:57.360 --> 00:04:00.480 and I think that this attack on individual liberty 33 00:04:00.480 --> 00:04:07.440 on Private Economy, because what is socialism? Socialism is public ownership. Public ownership 34 00:04:07.440 --> 00:04:12.520 is no such thing as public, so it's government ownership on the means of production, so-called. 35 00:04:12.520 --> 00:04:21.880 So the government ownership of capital assets. So the minister, I would say outrageous, is 36 00:04:21.880 --> 00:04:26.880 that we have, even today you can see that why we're paying a lot, also because government 37 00:04:26.880 --> 00:04:32.400 Government is paying already almost half, almost half of all health care expenses. 38 00:04:32.400 --> 00:04:39.280 So we have all the time this notion that kind of something wrong with our health care because 39 00:04:39.280 --> 00:04:46.120 free market kind of screwed up our health care and so we need government to recover our 40 00:04:46.120 --> 00:04:47.120 health care. 41 00:04:47.120 --> 00:04:53.320 Well, we can see that government already is the major purchaser of health care. 42 00:04:53.320 --> 00:05:01.520 And definitely, why would they save much if that's government money? 43 00:05:01.520 --> 00:05:09.520 The recollect was, I think, Lady Thatcher, she used to say, speak about bureaucrats in 44 00:05:09.520 --> 00:05:17.560 England, she said, why should we have one when we can have ten for five times the price? 45 00:05:17.560 --> 00:05:22.480 And so that's exactly, exactly kind of government accounting applicable to health care. 46 00:05:22.480 --> 00:05:28.600 All the ideas of healthcare socialists were, at first, I think it was Richard Virchow, 47 00:05:28.600 --> 00:05:33.960 the guy who prepared Otto von Bismarck, he prepared all the theories for Otto von Bismarck 48 00:05:33.960 --> 00:05:38.360 to impose the first welfare state in Germany at the end of the 19th century. 49 00:05:38.360 --> 00:05:43.960 And so his point was medicine is social science and politics, nothing but medicine on a grand 50 00:05:43.960 --> 00:05:46.480 scale, on a grand scale. 51 00:05:46.480 --> 00:05:51.480 So you can see that some people would say, well, with global warming, that's enough already 52 00:05:51.480 --> 00:05:58.800 to Justify Socialism, what Dr. Virchow was saying, that medicine is just enough to take 53 00:05:58.800 --> 00:06:04.800 over our lives, that that can be one single industry from which socialism would spread 54 00:06:04.800 --> 00:06:06.880 everywhere else. 55 00:06:06.880 --> 00:06:15.060 Then in the United States, for me it's very sad to see how brainwashing of people is going 56 00:06:15.060 --> 00:06:19.640 on at the expense of brainwashed and not brainwashers. 57 00:06:19.640 --> 00:06:27.600 So if you will look at national public radio, PBS, movies like Seco, and especially NPR 58 00:06:27.600 --> 00:06:35.440 and PBS, they use taxpayers' money to lobby for more taxpayers' money, to lobby for more 59 00:06:35.440 --> 00:06:44.280 socialism and especially kind of disgusting I would say is Michael Moore because he knows 60 00:06:44.280 --> 00:06:49.280 I know what he's doing and what if we'll go to Cuba at first. 61 00:06:50.520 --> 00:06:54.040 He's writing about Cuba, his movie is sicko, 62 00:06:54.040 --> 00:06:56.680 I think that maybe some of you watched it. 63 00:06:56.680 --> 00:06:58.000 It's an interesting movie. 64 00:06:58.000 --> 00:07:01.280 I know that it's kind of, 65 00:07:01.280 --> 00:07:03.640 it's better to get really drunk to watch it. 66 00:07:03.640 --> 00:07:08.640 Yeah, otherwise it would be detrimental to your health. 67 00:07:09.360 --> 00:07:12.300 This is, I've traveled to Cuba several times 68 00:07:12.300 --> 00:07:32.300 And yesterday, actually, I was discussed with Lew Rockwell, the idea of maybe having a von Mises Institute trip to Cuba, that would be very interesting, it would be like to go into the socialist zoo, that's the Jurassic Park of Socialism. 69 00:07:32.300 --> 00:07:42.800 So, this is... I'm thinking that, yes, I promised Lew that I will prepare some kind of a flyer for that event. 70 00:07:42.800 --> 00:07:49.800 This is Cuba. This is a store in Cuba. You can see that at the Workers Paradise, they have plenty of goods. 71 00:07:49.800 --> 00:07:56.800 This... I was asking, what is this in this box? This is the only good you can buy without a rationing coupon. 72 00:07:56.800 --> 00:08:15.800 and that's baking soda, even talking to a Cuban official I said that people who are in charge of baking soda should be in charge of the national economy and this is a Cuban kind of real estate, you can see it's a lot of fixer-uppers there 73 00:08:15.800 --> 00:08:27.200 That's a beautiful, proud people, completely destroyed, completely reduced to the life of Gulag prisoners. 74 00:08:27.200 --> 00:08:33.200 The whole island is like this, everything is deteriorating, falling apart. 75 00:08:33.200 --> 00:08:41.400 This is healthcare in Cuba, this is ambulance, this is Cuban ambulance, because I had some 76 00:08:41.400 --> 00:08:48.600 Some of my students watched Michael Moore's masterpiece and so they had some questions. 77 00:08:48.600 --> 00:08:50.680 And I have a friend from Cuba. 78 00:08:50.680 --> 00:08:53.280 He was brainwashed in Moscow. 79 00:08:53.280 --> 00:08:58.760 You know that Cuba was kind of a Soviet possession in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. 80 00:08:58.760 --> 00:09:01.600 And so he went to Moscow State University. 81 00:09:01.600 --> 00:09:07.920 And when I would go to Cuba with my students, I would, and when we would go, we had a meeting 82 00:09:07.920 --> 00:09:08.920 with him. 83 00:09:08.920 --> 00:09:13.720 And he would pass around his coupons, books, rationing books, and everything to show how... 84 00:09:13.720 --> 00:09:19.240 He, however, is kind of self-defensive, because, I mean, you cannot say suicidally that everything 85 00:09:19.240 --> 00:09:20.240 is bad. 86 00:09:20.240 --> 00:09:21.240 So he would say... 87 00:09:21.240 --> 00:09:26.280 And one young woman from my class, she said, well, we see it's a disaster completely, so 88 00:09:26.280 --> 00:09:30.120 many problems you have, but we heard that you have the best health care in the world. 89 00:09:30.120 --> 00:09:32.160 He said, sure, we do. 90 00:09:32.160 --> 00:09:35.320 We have the best health care in the world, but it would be even better if we would have 91 00:09:35.320 --> 00:09:42.320 This is just for the balance. I went with my students in January to Miami. And in Miami, we met some doctors who made these pictures from Cuba. This is not raisins. These are flies. You can see all around. This is a Cuban hospital, Cuban hospital. 92 00:10:05.320 --> 00:10:13.320 more pictures of Cuba, I can email you of Cuban hospitals 93 00:10:13.320 --> 00:10:21.320 so if we will go to Russia, Russia had the longest history of socialist medicine 94 00:10:21.320 --> 00:10:26.320 it was introduced in 1918 already, completely free 95 00:10:26.320 --> 00:10:34.320 and sure enough, look what happened after 75 years of socialist economizing 96 00:10:34.320 --> 00:10:48.840 in Russia, the population is declining, 36% of hospitals in Russia do not have running 97 00:10:48.840 --> 00:10:51.280 water sewer system. 98 00:10:51.280 --> 00:10:57.680 That's the superpower which was sending people to space, which had 28,000 nuclear warheads. 99 00:10:57.680 --> 00:11:03.280 I can imagine you have a surgery and then you need to go to the outhouse and the nurse 100 00:11:03.280 --> 00:11:13.560 First we'll go to the well and pick up a bucket of water there and boil it to wash the equipment 101 00:11:13.560 --> 00:11:14.900 and stuff like that. 102 00:11:14.900 --> 00:11:17.400 It's a complete disaster, complete disaster. 103 00:11:17.400 --> 00:11:21.860 What however is interesting for us is that now what they're doing, they are privatizing 104 00:11:21.860 --> 00:11:26.520 in a fast forward way, they are privatizing their health care. 105 00:11:26.520 --> 00:11:35.840 And I'm just trying to find there a quote, a quote from one member of Russian Duma, Russian 106 00:11:35.840 --> 00:11:42.640 Parliament, who is just essentially saying that it's amazing, yes, member of Russian 107 00:11:42.640 --> 00:11:48.680 Duma, Oleg Kulikov, his name is, he made a statement, it's fascinating, we are returning 108 00:11:48.680 --> 00:11:53.280 to capitalism and healthcare by increasing the share of private payments and healthcare 109 00:11:53.280 --> 00:11:58.400 Revisions, while Obama suggested the system, which we rightly can define as a communist 110 00:11:58.400 --> 00:12:05.080 or socialist system, they're assuming positions that we are so happily abandoned. 111 00:12:05.080 --> 00:12:07.280 And that's exactly what it is. 112 00:12:07.280 --> 00:12:08.280 Yes. 113 00:12:08.280 --> 00:12:15.720 If you will think that it's only kind of a barbarous Russia or backward Cuba, no. 114 00:12:15.720 --> 00:12:20.820 Look at all this wonderful social democracies of the Western Europe. 115 00:12:20.820 --> 00:12:21.820 Look at Sweden. 116 00:12:21.820 --> 00:12:25.980 in Sweden is right now busy privatizing their health care. David Cameron, British Prime 117 00:12:25.980 --> 00:12:31.100 Minister, just in the beginning of this year, his point is that the National Health Service 118 00:12:31.100 --> 00:12:39.360 in the United Kingdom is right now branching out and contracting out a lot of its service 119 00:12:39.360 --> 00:12:44.500 to private providers. And he made a point that in the long run we should privatize the 120 00:12:44.500 --> 00:12:51.660 whole industry. That's David Cameron. In Sweden, they have a pretty right-wing 121 00:12:51.660 --> 00:12:57.700 in Government. I mean, there's some strange kind of, in the United States, many people 122 00:12:57.700 --> 00:13:03.900 believe that Sweden is such a wonderful socialist paradise. It is not. It is, right now, I think 123 00:13:03.900 --> 00:13:10.500 it's more free from point of view of economics than the United States. And they are privatizing, 124 00:13:10.500 --> 00:13:16.320 and they privatized a lot of things already. And I remember when, that's the only funny 125 00:13:16.320 --> 00:13:22.080 Anything I heard from Mr. Gorbachev, I was one of economic advisors. I wouldn't take 126 00:13:22.080 --> 00:13:30.720 the blame for what happened over there. Something too big to fail failed. But the chief economic 127 00:13:30.720 --> 00:13:36.200 advisor was a bell-a-gun began, the biggest economist in the world. He was even bigger 128 00:13:36.200 --> 00:13:43.880 than me. He was maybe 400 pounds at least. And he all the time like a parrot would say, 129 00:13:43.880 --> 00:13:49.040 What we need in the socialist economist, we need to follow Swedish model. 130 00:13:49.040 --> 00:13:54.160 And he was repeating it on and on and on and even Gorbachev, he exploded, he said, Abel, 131 00:13:54.160 --> 00:13:56.680 where we would get all these Swedes? 132 00:13:56.680 --> 00:14:06.760 And that was the only kind of funny thing I heard from him. 133 00:14:06.760 --> 00:14:10.700 But that's definitely that it's a dead end. 134 00:14:10.700 --> 00:14:14.780 It's a complete mess, socialized health care. 135 00:14:14.780 --> 00:14:20.860 Back when I joined the economic reforms crowd in Moscow, the Gorbachev's Reform Team, I 136 00:14:20.860 --> 00:14:30.060 was put in for a medical checkup into the party hospital just to see kind of an inventory 137 00:14:30.060 --> 00:14:31.060 they have there. 138 00:14:31.060 --> 00:14:33.940 What did they get health-wise? 139 00:14:33.940 --> 00:14:39.700 What kind of slave you have, intellectual slave, what kind of my features are. 140 00:14:39.700 --> 00:14:44.820 And so I spent a week there, and they're taking tests and doing x-rays, and I'm thinking, 141 00:14:44.820 --> 00:14:48.740 why in the world are they keeping me for so long just for tests? 142 00:14:48.740 --> 00:14:54.260 And I had a wonderful doctor, nice, very nice, I'm not a look-sist, but she looked very nice, 143 00:14:54.260 --> 00:15:01.020 and so I invited her for a dinner, and she misunderstood me, well at that time I was 144 00:15:01.020 --> 00:15:09.660 25 years younger and didn't have this capitalist accumulations on me, so we went for a dinner, 145 00:15:09.660 --> 00:15:14.100 And at the dinner, my hidden agenda was to find out what's wrong with me, why they're 146 00:15:14.100 --> 00:15:15.660 keeping me in the hospital. 147 00:15:15.660 --> 00:15:19.460 And I asked her, and she said, come on, you should be happy that you're in the hospital, 148 00:15:19.460 --> 00:15:21.660 that means that everything is fine with you. 149 00:15:21.660 --> 00:15:23.380 I said, please explain. 150 00:15:23.380 --> 00:15:28.420 She said, well, look, I mean, you know you're an economist, it's planning, planning. 151 00:15:28.420 --> 00:15:33.700 Our major indicator of success is mortality rate. 152 00:15:33.700 --> 00:15:38.100 So the plan is that the hospital is good, considered to be good, if they have low mortality 153 00:15:38.100 --> 00:15:43.820 Rate, and if you need to have a low mortality rate, then you need to get rid of anybody 154 00:15:43.820 --> 00:15:53.780 who can die, and then the point was exactly that, if you would have any signs of this 155 00:15:53.780 --> 00:16:00.540 imminent death, then we would throw you out too, and so it is, I think we have enough 156 00:16:00.540 --> 00:16:06.140 of, in the United States, already enough of socialists, we have more than enough of socialists, 157 00:16:06.140 --> 00:16:24.140 We have unified school districts. Can you imagine if we would have these medical boards exactly like that, deciding who will die, who will not, and that never worked, and I'm thinking that it's just so obvious, and hopefully we'll get rid of that. 158 00:16:24.140 --> 00:16:30.180 However, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, and it's all in my paper, he presented a wonderful plan, 159 00:16:30.180 --> 00:16:36.980 what should be done, how we should cut on barriers erected by the government on the 160 00:16:36.980 --> 00:16:44.100 healthcare market, how we should open this market, how competition should reign there, 161 00:16:44.100 --> 00:16:49.660 and it would provide us with everything else, because mainstream economics also in the paper, 162 00:16:49.660 --> 00:16:55.540 by Kenneth Arrow or Paul Krugman or the likes, they're making the point that healthcare is 163 00:16:55.540 --> 00:16:56.540 not like bread. 164 00:16:56.540 --> 00:17:02.380 Yes, it's not like bread, definitely, I mean, but they don't say anything else. 165 00:17:02.380 --> 00:17:05.620 They're saying that it shouldn't be sold and bought because it's not bread.