Creeping Socialism
Last year, my then 50-year-old brother was hospitalized with cranial bleeding that turned out to be a brain aneurysm. He survived but cannot work. I won’t deny that I am grateful that Medicaid covered his expenses and that he now receives disability. Somehow, a prosperous society like ours should provide help for those who cannot care for themselves and for those who suffer major calamities. Having said that, I am convinced that the federal government is not the best provider for such assistance.
I got a “health care alert from working Americans,” attacking my Congressman for voting against the expansion of socialized medicine for children. It sounded so evil of him, daring to deny medical care for children. I despise that kind of dishonest rhetoric. Some call this step toward universal healthcare “incrementalism.” Knowing that many Americans still oppose socialized medicine, they want to give it to us anyway, in pieces. We already have Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor; this would bring in another segment—the children. Of course, as I understand it, “children” would include anyone under 25 in families that earn under $80,000 per year. That doesn’t strike me as merely poor children or just children; rather it is a grab for another big piece of the medical dollars. Who would be left? Just those between the ages of 25 and 65 who work to pay for it would remain for the next stage of the process.
“Universal health care” sounds so appealing. I heard a story about a man pushing his sick elderly wife to her death because they couldn’t pay for her medicine. That wouldn’t happen with universal health care, right? That’s what the socialists want us to think, but someone, somehow, must still pay these bills. Universal health care doesn’t change that. What it changes is the method of payment--taxing everyone, sending the money through another giant, expensive bureaucracy, and then rationing the available medical services to the entire population. Like the public education system, all competition and innovation would disappear, because in a monopolistic system run by the government, red tape rules.
Plenty of information already exists to warn gullible Americans about the dangers of universal health care in places like Canada and England. My mother had a strange eye problem. At first, they thought it was a mild stroke. She had brain scans and other tests. In the process, they found a blood clot in her heart, for which she now receives medication. Eventually, they decided that she had Bell’s Palsy, but that was after symptoms had already cleared up, on their own. Under a universal system, as we know from places that have one, she might have waited months for some of the tests, during which time she and her family would have worried anxiously about the possibility of another stroke, or she might have died from the undetected blood clot. She is 80 and otherwise in pretty good health.
In England, more people die from cancer than in many European countries. Why? The report says it’s because people are already in advanced stages of the disease at diagnosis. Could it be that is because their socialized system delays diagnosis, delays an appointment with a specialist, and, sadly, actually wants people to die, saving their system the cost of treating them? That’s the risk of a government run, universal system. Everybody gets the same medical care; everybody gets poor medical care.
I would rather have a capitalistic system where services are readily accessible and research keeps improving diagnosis and treatment. Specialists treated my brother’s aneurysms (The found a second when they were treating the first) by going through his artery, like an angiogram, and placing tiny coils of platinum inside the aneurysm. The established procedure would have been brain surgery, with all that involves. After this procedure, he walked out of the hospital on his own feet. Under a rationed, universal system, people like my brother wouldn’t get the chance for the innovative option, if such options even exist.
Sally Pipes has worked (here, here, here, and here) to provide better solutions to our supposed “health care crisis.” Health savings accounts, routine medical treatment by non-physicians, and better access and use of modern computer technology are just a few of the good alternatives to a government managed system.
I believe the current “crisis” is partly from typical progressive gloom-and-doom rhetoric and partly from the degree of socialized medicine and government control that already hampers the system. In addition, we have the added expense of covering millions of illegal aliens, from laws requiring hospitals to treat them. Add to that the growing sense that we all should depend on someone else, i.e. the government, to take care of us, so that people often make no provision for caring for themselves, and you have numerous people using emergency rooms, the most expensive medical facilities, for routine medical needs.
If government, at some level, must do anything, a better way would be mandatory insurance laws, something like those for car insurance, with the government covering premiums for the disabled, poor, or elderly, preferable at the state or local level. In fact, I would like to see what creative methods for assistance various groups, private as well as public, might devise if the federal government got out of it. The same wisdom would be good for education and many of the other social programs currently centered in Washington, programs laden with large, costly bureaucracies, burdensome regulation, and red tape. People like to call government programs a "safety net;" I think we would be safer looking out for ourselves.
If you have never read it, check out your U. S. Constitution. It gave the federal government quite limited duties, things that are best managed centrally, such as defense, treaties, printing money, and resolving interstate problems. Everything else it leaves to the states, to local governments, and ultimately to individuals. That is why the document begins “We the people of the United States.” Even income taxes were not written into the original; those came with war and the need to fund it and remained to plague us today.
The United States has been fortunate. We have remained prosperous with a growing economy to this very day, unlike socialist and communist countries, past and present. If we dare to permit our own nation to continue to move toward more progressive socialism, our own economy will eventually cease to grow and prosper. Capitalism is the engine of prosperity and the preserver of individual liberty; socialism is a parasite, consuming the prosperity of its people and restricting their freedom with empty promises of equal provision for all. When the people stop striving for their own prosperity and happiness, then soon there is no one to provide it for them. Universal health care is one such empty promise. I hope we won’t ever get the chance to find out just how empty it is.
I got a “health care alert from working Americans,” attacking my Congressman for voting against the expansion of socialized medicine for children. It sounded so evil of him, daring to deny medical care for children. I despise that kind of dishonest rhetoric. Some call this step toward universal healthcare “incrementalism.” Knowing that many Americans still oppose socialized medicine, they want to give it to us anyway, in pieces. We already have Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor; this would bring in another segment—the children. Of course, as I understand it, “children” would include anyone under 25 in families that earn under $80,000 per year. That doesn’t strike me as merely poor children or just children; rather it is a grab for another big piece of the medical dollars. Who would be left? Just those between the ages of 25 and 65 who work to pay for it would remain for the next stage of the process.
“Universal health care” sounds so appealing. I heard a story about a man pushing his sick elderly wife to her death because they couldn’t pay for her medicine. That wouldn’t happen with universal health care, right? That’s what the socialists want us to think, but someone, somehow, must still pay these bills. Universal health care doesn’t change that. What it changes is the method of payment--taxing everyone, sending the money through another giant, expensive bureaucracy, and then rationing the available medical services to the entire population. Like the public education system, all competition and innovation would disappear, because in a monopolistic system run by the government, red tape rules.
Plenty of information already exists to warn gullible Americans about the dangers of universal health care in places like Canada and England. My mother had a strange eye problem. At first, they thought it was a mild stroke. She had brain scans and other tests. In the process, they found a blood clot in her heart, for which she now receives medication. Eventually, they decided that she had Bell’s Palsy, but that was after symptoms had already cleared up, on their own. Under a universal system, as we know from places that have one, she might have waited months for some of the tests, during which time she and her family would have worried anxiously about the possibility of another stroke, or she might have died from the undetected blood clot. She is 80 and otherwise in pretty good health.
In England, more people die from cancer than in many European countries. Why? The report says it’s because people are already in advanced stages of the disease at diagnosis. Could it be that is because their socialized system delays diagnosis, delays an appointment with a specialist, and, sadly, actually wants people to die, saving their system the cost of treating them? That’s the risk of a government run, universal system. Everybody gets the same medical care; everybody gets poor medical care.
I would rather have a capitalistic system where services are readily accessible and research keeps improving diagnosis and treatment. Specialists treated my brother’s aneurysms (The found a second when they were treating the first) by going through his artery, like an angiogram, and placing tiny coils of platinum inside the aneurysm. The established procedure would have been brain surgery, with all that involves. After this procedure, he walked out of the hospital on his own feet. Under a rationed, universal system, people like my brother wouldn’t get the chance for the innovative option, if such options even exist.
Sally Pipes has worked (here, here, here, and here) to provide better solutions to our supposed “health care crisis.” Health savings accounts, routine medical treatment by non-physicians, and better access and use of modern computer technology are just a few of the good alternatives to a government managed system.
I believe the current “crisis” is partly from typical progressive gloom-and-doom rhetoric and partly from the degree of socialized medicine and government control that already hampers the system. In addition, we have the added expense of covering millions of illegal aliens, from laws requiring hospitals to treat them. Add to that the growing sense that we all should depend on someone else, i.e. the government, to take care of us, so that people often make no provision for caring for themselves, and you have numerous people using emergency rooms, the most expensive medical facilities, for routine medical needs.
If government, at some level, must do anything, a better way would be mandatory insurance laws, something like those for car insurance, with the government covering premiums for the disabled, poor, or elderly, preferable at the state or local level. In fact, I would like to see what creative methods for assistance various groups, private as well as public, might devise if the federal government got out of it. The same wisdom would be good for education and many of the other social programs currently centered in Washington, programs laden with large, costly bureaucracies, burdensome regulation, and red tape. People like to call government programs a "safety net;" I think we would be safer looking out for ourselves.
If you have never read it, check out your U. S. Constitution. It gave the federal government quite limited duties, things that are best managed centrally, such as defense, treaties, printing money, and resolving interstate problems. Everything else it leaves to the states, to local governments, and ultimately to individuals. That is why the document begins “We the people of the United States.” Even income taxes were not written into the original; those came with war and the need to fund it and remained to plague us today.
The United States has been fortunate. We have remained prosperous with a growing economy to this very day, unlike socialist and communist countries, past and present. If we dare to permit our own nation to continue to move toward more progressive socialism, our own economy will eventually cease to grow and prosper. Capitalism is the engine of prosperity and the preserver of individual liberty; socialism is a parasite, consuming the prosperity of its people and restricting their freedom with empty promises of equal provision for all. When the people stop striving for their own prosperity and happiness, then soon there is no one to provide it for them. Universal health care is one such empty promise. I hope we won’t ever get the chance to find out just how empty it is.
Comments
My complaint is not that they get quality service but that they'd force common folk into a system that is inferior. They should not be allowed to create two levels of quality, one for themselves, and another for ordinary people.