The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.
– Minority Report: H. L. Mencken’s Notebooks (1956) p. 247

The concept of "universal health care," reportedly so popular with the American electorate these days, may at first glance sound appealing. We are told that under a government-run or “single payer” system, one can just sit back, theoretically at least, and stop worrying as cradle to grave health care will be made available to everyone on an equal basis—the best that American medicine has to offer, infinitely more affordable, maybe even free, to masses of people who are currently losing sleep over the possibility of going bankrupt under the problematic status quo health-care delivery system (a mix of the free market and big government programs like Medicare and Medicaid) or who have no health insurance at all.

As usual, however, there are high prices to be paid for such a Faustian bargain. The uncontrolled financial costs, inflation, decline in quality, rationing, and other downsides, well documented in countries with long experience in government-run health care, are rarely if ever made apparent, or admitted to, at the onset of a new program. Among the indirect, less well-recognized costs are the emerging plans to set up huge new government databases (tapping into and mining private commercial databases) and large new bureaucracies to “track down” and enforce compliance on residents who fail to buy approved medical coverage.

In 1965, the mandatory federal program Medicare began to move a significant part of the American population, aged 65 and older, into the conventional allopathic medical treatment system. It represented a gradual, incremental road to socialized medicine. In 2007, plans are moving forward in a number of states to force all residents, not just the elderly—under the threat of law—to participate in the conventional medical monopoly. (Meanwhile, all Democrat candidates for the 2008 presidential nomination have pledged to support federal government-run universal health care.)

Universal health care on the state level is already in effect in Massachusetts. On July 1, 2007, as the result of a law passed in 2006, all Massachusetts residents will need to prove that they have state-approved conventional medical insurance.

However, according to USA Today, the cost of such coverage is expensive and it increases as one ages. In fact, one out of five uninsured Massachusetts residents cannot afford it—the very people the new universal system was supposed to cover. "…[T]he board overseeing the first-in-the-nation effort to require everyone to carry insurance exempted up to 20% of the state's estimated 328,000 uninsured adults from penalties if they do not purchase coverage," reports USA Today. According to the Commonwealth Connector Web site, a health plan that meets the state's mandates would cost between $6,866 to $19,791 annually for a family of four consisting of two adults age 40 and two dependent children.

Moreover, it's emblematic of a government-controlled health-care scheme to limit consumer choices. And so it is in Massachusetts. According to a 2002 national survey, 36 percent of U.S. adults aged 18 years and over use some form of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), which is defined as a group of diverse medical and health-care systems, practices, and products that are not presently considered to be part of conventional medicine. When prayer specifically for health purposes is included in the definition of CAM, the number rises to 62 percent. Yet none of the plans under Commonwealth Care lists coverage for any CAM health-care options, including chiropractic. (Commonwealth Care is the state program that subsidizes insurance for individuals or families whose income is less than 300 percent of the federal poverty level.) And plans available through the Connector offer limited access to CAM services. Forcing citizens to purchase and choose from a restricted choice of health-insurance plans that don't cover their choice of services and providers is the antithesis to freedom. It is extortion.