Socialism -- alive and well in America

Published in The Washington Times August 24, 2001

I applaud William H. Peterson for his book review supporting the elimination of the inefficient and stifling modern welfare state, the tactic described by "liberty under law" advocate Sheldon Richman in "Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State" ("Abolish the welfare state," Op-Ed, Aug. 21).

Nowhere are the coercive and seductive forces of socialism more prevalent than in the Medicare system. Long after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the socialist mind-set is alive and well threatening to undermine the quality of health care available to our nation's elderly.

In an effort to provide all seniors not the just the poor, but also middle- and upper-income with equal health care benefits, our government has succeeded in promoting assembly-line medicine. This has degraded the value of the personal relationship between doctors and patients and debased the purchasing power of those who can well afford to pay for their own treatment.

If we fail to adopt necessary reforms, the approaching retirement of the bulging baby-boom generation most certainly will intensify our reliance on Medicare. Blinded by the pursuit of more and more medical "freebies," America will remain vulnerable to the creeping socialism that slowly is reducing one of the world's finest healthcare systems to that of a collectivist Third World state.

LEONARD M. GREENE
President
Institute for SocioEconomic Studies
White Plains, NY