Home > Classic Prechter
Universal Health Care: Does It Signify a Market Top?
Bob Prechter has studied waves of social mood to see how they affect the financial markets. Back in the mid-90s when the Clinton Administration tried to reform health care in the United States, Bob saw something that eluded most social commentators. Now that health care reform is back on the front burner again, it's the right time to consider what he said universal health care means for the markets.
* * * * *
Q: You have referred to the Clinton administration’s effort to establish a government program to insure health care for all as a very major top signal. Why?
Bob Prechter: The Black Death occurred in the 1300s at the low of wave two in the Millennium degree advance, when one third of the population in Western Civilization died of disease. Historians have credited the Plague with inaugurating modern medicine. The Plague exposed the inadequacy of the old “four humours” theory as well as cures based upon religion. So medical science was born at a time when health was considered a rare blessing. Today, personal health in the United States is considered a natural condition, an entitlement we’re born with that only incompetent doctors could disrupt. The historically unprecedented number and size of malpractice awards bestowed upon customers of doctors by U.S. courts reflects that attitude among the population. In response to it, the leader of the world’s most powerful government tried to decree “quality health care” a right of the entire population.
Q: You see the change from the situation in the mid-14th century as a reflection of a long term journey from low to high?
Bob Prechter: Universal health care is such an extreme wish that it can only mean a top. It’s not a mid-trend phenomenon. Medicare and Medicaid were launched at the major top of the mid-1960s, and this one is being floated now.
Q: But universal health care didn’t pass.
Bob Prechter: It nearly did. It had the support of 70% of the population for awhile. Besides, whether any such scheme is adopted or not, it is obvious that such social intentions are manifestations of an extreme attitude about “entitlements” to comfort and support that may not have existed in history except perhaps in the late Roman Empire.