We Already Have Socialized Medicine

Let’s start out with the proposition that the government has no business paying for healthcare for anyone who is not employed by the government. We have Truman, a Democrat, to thank for a bankrupt idea. His administration passed the Medicare bill, to add more fraud and waist we now have Medicaid. For all the talk of the uninsured you’d think that at least a few people would mention that those who cannot afford health insurance already have it, and it’s called MEDICAID, remember?

“Medicaid was created in 1965 through Title XIX of the Social Security Act. Health insurance is offered to people who would otherwise be unable to afford or have access to it. Medicaid pays for nearly 40% of childbirths in the country, and around 60% of elderly people's health care.” That’s a load of low-paying wage earners isn’t it?

Note how much government healthcare already costs taxpayers. The U.S. spends over $2.4 trillion on health care (almost 17 percent of GDP), and the government accounts for almost one-half of all health care spending.

It’ s wasteful spending and is only necessary because politicians and environmental kooks have destroyed the industrial might of American, put millions of workers out of high paying jobs. They live on cheap fast foods, obesity is now a serious medical problem. Iron workers didn’t have this problem, but so many do-gooders were so worried about their safety and lungs. Now those workers who could afford healthcare are working at minimum wage jobs at McDonalds.

As for socialized medicine, hello! We already have it, it’s called Medicare and Medicaid, and if you voted for socialized medicine then while you cogitate that vote, pucker up next time you visit your Medicaid doctor and get ready to kiss his derriere good-by, because in Medicaid, 23 percent of them are not accepting new Medicaid patients, and 18 percent are accepting only some. And while you are at it bend over because if you voted for handouts, serious legislative efforts are underway that will likely chip away at seniors' access to the private plans they want in Medicare. And I hope you don’t mind dying a painless death because if Obamacare passes you will forced to attend end of life counseling on how much you are costing the younger taxpayers, and how useless you really are to society. Instead of high paying secure jobs in manufacturing, the Democrats have been offering handouts in the form of taxpayer supported security blankets like universal healthcare. They will let you die because you cost too much, but prop up corporations that can no longer survive the onslaught of their insane legislation. The obvious conclusion in my estimation is that government knows that it cannot offer high paying secure jobs.

The U.S. economy is in shambles. In the first place government cannot create jobs. Whatever jobs are created by government for taxpayers are paid for by other taxpayers. Government jobs create debt not wealth. How hard is that to understand? If it is profitable government is not doing it, nor should it! If the government ran a chicken farm a dozen eggs would cost $50. But socialized medicine will be different? Give me a break!

Private enterprise and secure high paying jobs is one aspect of the freedoms of liberty for which good Americans died, and is the kind of liberty that Americans deserve, not government handouts, because handouts are not free, other Americans pay for them with their own sweat and headaches.

Freedom requires that government get out of the way, get off our backs, leave businessmen alone to create wealth and create jobs, allow hard working people to prosper, and allow the less productive members of society to live, but without taxpayer support. If that sounds cruel to you, then start a charity with your own money and ask for contributions from anyone who feels compelled to run a socialist state.

If politicians think that socialized healthcare is such a great idea, then why they intend to exempt themselves from it? Instead of attacking the messenger, it would be nice for a change to hear an intelligent answer to any of these issues. Frankly, I’m disgusted by the apparent ignorance and arrogance of anyone who attacks the messenger and has nothing to add to an intelligent dialogue. It’s not funny when your life depends upon it!

In my experience working for twenty years as a firefighter, the worst abusers of our medical system are the ones who liberal democrats lead us to believe are being denied care. We have regulars, people who are transported by ambulance to a hospital nearly every day for maladies which could not be considered emergencies by any reasonable person.

Most of the regulars do not have jobs or insurance. Generally they are looking for attention from firefighters, paramedics, hospital staff, and doctors. These people literally get transported by ambulance for hang nails. Our most celebrated regular caller managed to run up unpaid hospital and ambulance bills which totaled more than $2,000,000 dollars in one year. Our local paper the Tacoma News Tribune even did a story on him a few years ago mentioning these figures.

Our health care system has a lot of problems but poor people being denied care is not one of them. If anything people in our country, especially “poor” people are using the health care system for problems people used to handle with common sense. This is actually encouraged by a combination of government policy and the fear of lawsuits if someone is denied care and a litigious “poor” person claims they were discriminated against. The massive amount of waste that I see as a firefighter from people who are abusing our medical system is maddening.

If Medicare is such a success, why does AARP support the reduction if not the outright elimination of this program that will happen with Obama care? Why does AARP support a plan that encourages seniors to sacrifice their life with end of life counseling, so as to not be a burden on the others needing care?

I've not kept up with all the details of the new legislation but I think there is a lot of misinformation being thrown out by health insurance lobbyist. I'm not for obama's new healthcare deal but there are some good things in it and some bad.

http://www.californiahealthline.org/Articles/2009/6/15/President-Outlines-Cuts-to-Medicare-Medicaid-To-Help-Cover-Reform-Costs.aspx

# $110 billion by making across-the-board “productivity adjustments” to Medicare payment increases. The proposal would slow projected increases in Medicare payments to hospitals and other providers, excluding physicians, to promote more cost-effective care;
# $22 billion by cutting reimbursements for imaging services, skilled nursing and inpatient rehabilitation facilities and long-term care hospitals, as well as waste- and fraud-reduction efforts (Bettelheim, CQ Today, 6/14);

http://news.yahoo.com/s/cq/20090613/pl_cq_politics/politics3142731
President Obama on Saturday outlined a series of Medicare and Medicaid cuts he said would slice $313 billion in payments over 10 years so that the savings could be applied toward an overhaul of the U.S. health system.

The cuts come on top of Medicare and Medicaid revisions Obama requested earlier this year in his fiscal 2010 budget proposal; together with those cuts the White House is now proposing a total of $622 billion in Medicare and Medicaid revisions over 10 years, most of it from Medicare.

Fireman15,

First, I honor your service and pray for your safety. As an attorney, I have experience with people who hate their jobs and complain about job related injuries. They use injury as an excuse to stay out of work. In most cases they receive the same take home salary as they would be earning on the job. These are people who lack the work ethic of those who made this country strong. The legal system has created a moral hazard that enables those who would abuse the system to do so. Considering the fact that they are scamming a profit-oriented insurance company, we know from experience that the fraud in a government system that is administered by bureaucrats whose money is not at risk, and who are essentially absentee owners, will be multiple millions of dollars worse.

In years passed, legal immigrants worked in the steel mills of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; Youngstown, Ohio; and Gary, Indiana. Coal miners, railroad workers, and men who drilled in the ground for oil, all contributed to the wealth of this nation, earned a good living, and paid their own medical bills.

That was a different time and place. Character meant doing an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. Most families had a live-in mother and father, of the opposite sex. They taught their children traditional family values, and about God. They fought and died for those values, and asked only that the government provide men and women like you to keep the peace, and save lives and property when catastrophe befell them.

Liberals like President Obama believe they have a better way. They are wrong. History will not only prove them wrong, but already has relegated to the scrap heap of history the failed socialist governments.

Keep the faith, and we as a band of brothers fighting for traditional values and for a return to individual choice and freedom, will overcome. To quote a phrase that seems trite in the face of the holocaust to come if we do nothing, “It is darkest before the Dawn.”, and we are the light of the future. Make no mistake about it because we are STILL AMERICANS!

Street Lawyer

If Medicare is such a failure why do the seasoned citizens and AARP protect it tooth and nail? Just asking.

You pose an interesting question. I don't pretend to have THE answer, but firstly the AARP, like all unions does not represent their constituents first. They represent their organization first, which is how they earn a living. Just as the American Medical Association that recently endorsed the proposed the takeover of private healthcare plans, the AARP does not represent all seniors, any more than the AMA represents all medical doctors.

The existing healthcare system is broken as well, but it is not the fault of the free market. There has never been a free market in insurance coverage. The individual states have regulated the insurance industry. Insurance commissioners determine the rates, terms and conditions of insurance policies. Not every company that wants to can be authorized to provide insurance coverage. Some companies do not want to provide insurance coverage because they can't make a profit based upon the rates approved by the insurance commissioner.

One can argue that the cost of insurance is high partly because there is no competition for business, given that the insurance commissioner is calling the shots and not the free market.

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