(from the Patriot Post US)
"We are well on the way, step by step, to being saddled with the same high-cost, low-yield healthcare system that plagues our Canadian and European friends. A cursory look at the numbers is indeed quite alarming. The U.S. population has reached 300 million, more than 35 million of whom are senior citizens on Medicare. The working-age population is nearly 258 million, and Medicare, Medicaid and military health programs cover 45 million of them, while another 18 million are public-sector employees, with health care covered by taxpayers. That means one third of Americans are taxpayer covered in one form or another, not including dependents. Add in mandated free hospital care for the uninsured, tax subsidies for companies that provide health insurance for employees, and our marvelous new Republican-authored prescription-drug benefit, and the burden on government is roughly two thirds of total healthcare spending! Government spending on healthcare is fast approaching 10 percent of the GDP.
As we’ve said in these pages before, getting the government entirely out of the healthcare business is the direction in which we need to go. Subsidizing in any way can only increase the cost. Of course, when politicians’ power depends on demagoguery, little can really be done to stop the slide into the socialist ditch."
Then what, pray tell, IS the answer for the millions of Americans who have no health care, insurance, or coverage? Is it just their own bad luck?
ReplyDeleteThe war in Iraq could have paid for universal US health coverage. What's your specific suggestion, seeing's as you think whatever is on the table is simply not the answer?
Sue, I'm not sure what the answer is. But I know for damnded sure that it is NOT totally handing healthcare over to the government. The government is NOT taking care of business now. Fiscal/ethical oversight is a complete joke (North Carolina is evidence enough of that). Billions have been plundered/wasted/diverted to deep pockets. The solution is not to throw more good money after bad.
ReplyDeleteThe solution is also going to have to include some personal responsibility and accountability . . . to stop relying on "the village" to make ends meet. Just because the government might have been able to afford universal health coverage if we had not gone to Iraq, does not mean that (1) it's the direction to go, or (2) it would have happened.
Besides, I'm quite certain the money would have been poured into something else.
Sue, what was the answer long ago when there was no health care, insurance, etc.?
ReplyDeleteIt was called PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY.
Learn it, use it. The government is not there to take care of your every need.
"The war in Iraq could have paid for universal US health coverage."
ReplyDeleteThanks for letting us know what your mindset is on this issue, Sue.` You offer a false choice.
That statement promotes a fallacy regarding the costs of health care, and is indicative of the mindset of people who really do not understand the nature of the problem.
Mitt Romney's program. shows promise, without the huge downside of "universal health care", or what ever other name you want to use to describe a huge new government program. It makes personal responsibility important, as in Dr. J and jaycee suggested.
Key point:
"Of course, while it may be free for them, everyone else ends up paying the bill, either in higher insurance premiums or taxes. The solution we came up with was to make private health insurance much more affordable. Insurance reforms now permit policies with higher deductibles, higher copayments, coinsurance, provider networks and fewer mandated benefits like in vitro fertilization--and our insurers have committed to offer products nearly 50% less expensive. With private insurance finally affordable, I proposed that everyone must either purchase a product of their choice or demonstrate that they can pay for their own health care. It's a personal responsibility principle."
"Free" universal health care, and proposals like Hillary care are not part of the solution, but they are definitely part of the problem.
Sue, this thread (and your response to it) bothered me all night. I had another thought, as I woke up this morning. At the risk of being called an embittered "whack-job", one would think that if you're a proponent of government healthcare, you'd also be a proponent of them doing it right . . . of good oversight and strict accountability.
ReplyDeleteSo maybe (as you cheerlead for Hillary and John - on whose watches my disaster happened/played out) you should be a little more interested/sympathetic when a local physician brings you a story of how local/state/federal government got it horribly wrong with one doctor in one program (very similar to programs John Edwards has proposed) . . . and do something to help.
Rather, than what you have done . . . which is figuratively spit in her face and call her names.