Connecticut ping!
Please Freepmail me if you want on or off my infrequent Connecticut ping list.
Posted on 04/18/2007 7:04:16 PM PDT by shrinkermd
Health Care: A little piece of news out of Connecticut shows us that the resistance to universal coverage needs to be ratcheted higher. Free access to medical care for everyone is an economy-killer.
Like unthinking politicians from Washington, D.C., to Washington state, lawmakers in Connecticut are considering legislation that would set up a Medicare-type system for everyone in the state under 65. But there's a little matter of cost.
The Connecticut legislature's Office of Fiscal Analysis, a nonpartisan professional agency, has estimated that providing health care to the state's 2.95 million residents who are not covered by Medicare would run between $11.8 billion and $17.7 billion a year. To put that in perspective, Gov. M. Jodi Rell has proposed a $17.5 billion budget next year for all state operations.
Given those numbers, imagine a national system created by Democrats, the driving force behind a single-payer system that would provide access to everyone. Federal spending, to be roughly $3 trillion in fiscal 2008, would double, or nearly double.
Now imagine how that would impact the economy.
Trouble is, such an enormous cost will not dissuade the avid proponents of universal care. Being statists and socialists at heart, they wouldn't mind if the health care burden placed on taxpayers wrecked the economy.
In fact, it's easy to believe that many would be rather happy with a collapse so they could blame it on the "failures" of capitalism and begin the process of dismantling the only system that has improved the human condition.
Universal health care supporters believe that free access to medical coverage is a right. It is, however, a creation of overworked fantasies. No such right can be found in the Constitution. Could it be that because any "right" that requires someone else to give up a right — in this case taxpayers being forcibly separated from their money to pay for something that is an individual responsibility — simply does not qualify as a right?
Should Connecticut lawmakers succeed in enacting a universal health care law, it would be the first state to do so. The law's authors will of course take pride in their work, but it's regret and shame they should instead feel. Emboldened by the broken barrier, others will quickly follow Connecticut's lead, and they will just as quickly fall into the same ditch because they won't hold off long enough to see the disaster unfold.
We wish we were confident that Connecticut's Republican governor would veto any foolish universal care law. But given the lack of backbone in many of today's Republicans, especially those in the Northeast, we're uneasy about the prospects of universal health care being stopped in the Constitution State. About the best the GOP can muster is this dishwater thinking from Connecticut House Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero Jr.:
"Isn't it worth looking at what we have and trying to make it work better?"
Better than universal care, but not better than a market solution.
If the past is any guide what will resul is Draconian t controls and service denials because the electorate likes the idea but does not like paying for it. Actually, they probably can't pay for it.
Hillarycare was planned to be financed first with all the medical insurance plans paid by government for federal, state and municipal employees. Secondly they planned to divert all the Veterans medical budget to the plan. Thirdly, they planned to pull in all medical insurance payments already made by corporate programs, and so on.
This allowed them to come up with a relatively small additional tax on everybody to pay for the people not already covered by insurance.
Hillarycare lost favor quickly as people realized the plan was going to take their medical care benefits for which they were working and give them away to other people who were not working.
This state plan with its exceedingly high costs probably assumed the state of CT couldn't just go take away corporate or federal benefits from state residents just to finance their new system.
It's doomed.
It will be a lot easier to pay for when all the working adults move out of state....Not.
Actually, I disagree. I think most Marxists and socialists are motivated either by their delusions of grandeur, or by their envy and hatred of the status quo. Look at Hugo Chavez. He’s clearly got an ego bigger than Venezuela. It’s about him. Castro is another egomaniac. To say they have a ‘dream’ is to give them credit for having some compassionate motivation for the betterment of humanity. If that were true, there wouldn’t have been over 100 million dead under Stalin. The Marxist and socialist leaders want to be adored for saving humanity. It’s ultimately about them.
It's also a health killer. People and communitites don't develop habits of preventive lifestyles and health care measures, if they don't have to pay for their health care out of their own resources, nor do they take steps to optimize their health even after high treatment costs have been paid for them. People don't put much value on what they get for free.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
“See Tennessee’s dance with the devil on this (TennCare) and what happened there. Universal health care is nuts.”
Agreed:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1769201/posts
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Connecticut ping!
Please Freepmail me if you want on or off my infrequent Connecticut ping list.
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