Venezuela Proves, Again, Socialism Doesn't Work

Hopefully California, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have noticed the fall of the Venezuelan bolivar. It is so bad that Venezuelans are gladly taking American dollars at a premium over its bolivar even though the dollar itself is losing value at a remarkable pace.

The Venezuelan bolivar started its fall when Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez plunged Venezuela into a socialist state by implementing socialist economic policies including nationalizing oil and telephone companies.

Investors bailed out of Venezuela faster than Eliot Spitzer pulled up his pants after his last cabinet meeting. This sent inflation as high as 24%. To stabilize their own wealth Venezuelans tried to scramble out of the bolivar for the more stable (only in relative terms) dollar.

Trying to slow capital flight, Venezuela limits its citizens to $5,000 in annual credit card purchases abroad. That is 10,750 bolivars, at the official exchange rate of 2.15 to the dollar. But at the prevailing black-market rate of 4.5 to the dollar, the amount more than doubles to 22,500 bolivars.

Now imagine this, socialized medicine. It is guaranteed that the US will enter the abyss of socialized healthcare if Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama get their hands on White House.

Will healthcare prices inflate? Yes, part of the problem now is that health care is subsidized to some extent. For healthcare to come down in price the consumer must know the price they are paying for the service. As it stands now, the insurance company, negotiates a price and the consumer never knows how much they paid for the service. If the consumer has unlimited free trips to the emergency room for runny noses, they will continually run to the emergency room for runny noses. It happens, most military members can vouch for this.

On the other hand, if the consumer must pay for the service they are seeking, they will think twice before running into the emergency room for a runny nose at $600 per visit or whatever the going rate is today.

This is not perfect, some people who need to go to the emergency room may not because of the price, but nothing is ever perfect.

The bottom line to socialized medicine is this, the very bottom of the social ladder will see an increase in healthcare benefits, but private healthcare costs will escalate to the point the middle class will not be able to afford decent healthcare and be sentenced to a system similar to the UK's or Canada's. Clinton's and Obama's plan doesn't raise the poor so much as it just drags down the middle class to the impoverished level. That way everyone will be equally miserable.