Liberals prefer to call it "universal health care" because it sounds more politically correct and it's an easier pill to swallow (pun intended), but what we're really talking about today is socialized health care. All too often we hear the socialists like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Al Gore and others bandstanding about the issue of Americans who don't have or can't afford health insurance. Their "fix" is known as "universal health care" where they make hefty promises to insure all Americans. Insert, "We're the government... we're here to help."
The problems with socialized health care are many, but I'll touch on a few of the big points in here.
1. COST. The only way for the federal government to pay for insurance for uninsured Americans is to raise taxes to unprecedented levels. Canadians often brag about their having "free health care." FREE my butt! They pay for their socialized health care system by having 50-60% of their income taxed to pay for said system.
2. Efficiency. Remember the social health care system promoted by then First Lady Hillary Clinton during her husband's first term? Her proposed health care system wound up becoming a bureaucratic monster that included over 1,000 pages of text. It was so complex, that even Congress couldn't make sense of it all. This complexity, among other things, thankfully led to the plan's demise.
3. Choice. I sure as hell don't want the government telling me WHEN I can see my doctor, WHO my doctor can be and for WHAT reasons I can pay him an office visit. A socialized health care system like what we see in Canada and Europe dictates all these things to the average citizen rather than letting him or her make reasonable choices.
4. Incentive. Socialized medicine destroys physician incentives to provide top-quality, competitive care to patients. Drug companies are hindered by restrictive government regulations and price controls and soon cannot develop new medicines.
5. Privacy and liberty are destroyed by submitting your personal freedom of choice to the government. Enough said on that!
Liberals love to beat the dead horse by telling us nightmare stories from those who are sick/uninsured. And this author sympathizes with those individuals. I'd love for all Americans to have proper health care. But socialized medicine is NOT the answer. What liberals DO NOT mention is that while far from perfect, health care in the United States is the best in the world because it is based on a free-market, competitive, profit-based system. This system promotes continuous improvements in physician care and pharmaceutical research to be competitive, which translate to the best patient care in the world!
Consider this interesting fact brought to my attention by a co-worker and MyVoice reader... In 2006, the former Prime Minister of Italy and richest man in that country, Silvio Berlusconi, was diagnosed with a dangerously irregular heart rhythm. Berlusconi, being a very wealthy man in a position of power, could have gone anywhere in the world for heart surgery. He didn't choose to get on a 3-month waiting list for surgery in Europe or Canada. Instead, he personally phoned President Bush and asked him to recommend a good American hospital. In the end, Berlusconi had his heart surgery performed at the world renowned Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. He chose to have his surgery in the U.S. for good reason!
We all want every American to have proper health care coverage, but if we want that health care to remain the best in the world, we must say HELL NO to socialized, government controlled medicine!
2 comments:
Of course, I am in complete agreement with your comments.
If we'd fix the Title 19 program (already in existence) we might be able to fix the uninsured / underinsured problem. That program is so outdated. It could be a success with the right tweaking.
Mav's Girl...
I’m from Ireland. We have universal health coverage. If I get sick tomorrow morning I can see my doctor the same day. If I need hospital treatment I can be seen by a doctor in a hospital on the same day. I need never worry that becoming ill will bankrupt me. It’s not a perfect system by any means but I feel safer here than I would in the US. In Ireland it is possible to pay for insurance cover…those who can afford to pay for private insurance do (inc. me) but everybody sees the same doctors and gets the same care. I have the option of going “public” or “private” whenever I need treatment…there’s little or no difference…my only ever MRI was private because the clinic was marginally nearer where I work.
When my family were on holidays in Canada my little brother got sick (brain tumour). He received excellent care in a Canadian hospital. While we had travel insurance cover which paid for his care (and 3 operations) if we had not had cover my brother would still have been treated. On our return to Ireland my brother had a final operation and similarly received excellent care.
The Canadian doctors told us that if my brother had been treated in the US the cost of the treatment would have been twice as much. You are being over-charged.
Drop the talking point “socialised medicine” it’s a propaganda buzz word designed to blind you to the truth.
Universal health coverage works in every other industrialised capitalist country…the insurance industry has a vested interest in keeping you in the dark. Don’t be fooled
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