Was there ever an issue to divide people along political lines?
Health reform was one of Mr Obama's key election promises. Nearly 50 million people are without medical insurance. Mr Obama is proposing a 10-year reform programme, estimated to cost about $1 trillion, that would make healthcare available to all Americans.
Leaving aside non-President Obama himself, leaving alone the sniping at and by the socialists, leaving aside anything else which could cloud the issue, what does one do about health care?
On the one hand, the poor do suffer - 50 million without cover from 300 million - that's frightening. The sooner government gets out of our lives the better ... and yet ... and yet. The poor have no medical cover and medical cover in America is an imperative.
Where do you draw the line. I understand that it is imperative to have a car in the US if you work. I'll await my government supplied car from GM.
ReplyDeleteIt's imperative that we all eat fresh veg every day for our health. I'll await my government supplied fruit and veg.
It's imperative that we all have enough to retire on comfortably. I'll await my government supplied pension.
etc. etc.
It's been tried and failed before but this time it's the messiah so it'll obviously work. :) Jesus only looked after the 5000. The messiah will make it 500 Million. Jesus was such a slacker.
And I thought the US was somewhere to escape to. Not much chance of that now.
You may have been sucked into the dialectic of your enemies, Sir James. They redefine the language by keeping the same terms and inverting them.
ReplyDeleteSocialist medicine is not and cannot be reform; it is the end of progress, and worse.
Tocqueville--The unity, the universality, the omnipotence of society's power, and the uniformity of its rules represent the outstanding features of all the political systems invented in our day. They recurr at the heart of the strangest utopias. The human mind still pursues these images even in its dreams. It is above all in the details that we risk enslaving men. Freedom in the big things in life are less important than in the slightest.
That would be no less true were there 50 million uninsured. But the socialists not only disagree in their conclusions, they also get their facts wrong. Quite deilberately.
The Census Bureau tells us there are 46.6 million uninsured. Simple enough. But 9.4 million (by census) are illegals. That number does not include to two or three billion who would be illegals but have not the means to get here.
So there are now 37 million cans of beer left on the wall for the heartless reactionary.
There are 17 million who make over 50K a year and choose not to have health insurance, especially the younger worker. Half make over 75K.
That's 20 million cans left on the wall.
Yet 45% of those are without insurance because they are between jobs and did not pay for Cobra. They typically will be insured within four months.
That leaves 8 million citizens chronically uninsured and who make less than 50K.
Most problems here in healthcare pricing and accessability are due to obsticals to free makts--regulatory interference of all kinds, and tort lawyers. Doctors do not pay for malpractice insurance, their patients do.
If we end even this cribbed system, we are descending into a hole that, as you know, is permanent.