Government-run Healthcare: Disaster For All

Socialized Medicine Will Not Only Make You Wait - It Could Kill You

If there is one reason to consider not giving Hillary or Obama or Edwards (or any Democrat) the nod in Nov 2008 your health is it. No one is saying that the state of the healthcare industry in America is perfect. No one is saying that in a country like ours children should go without basic healthcare. But if you want to save the children nationalizing healthcare under a government-run single payer system is not the way to do it.

One need only to look at the British, Canadian and Cuban systems to see what would happen here on a massive scale. For certain some people (and corporations) in those countries love their healthcare system because its "free". Nothing in life is free. There are trade offs. In Cuba the trade off for "free" healthcare is freedom itself. That's why self-serving bastards like Michael Moore is so disingenuous when he hauls Americans to Havana for healthcare to make some kind of point about our country. The poor (and I mean poor in every sense) souls in Cuba would be beaten and jailed if they dare to try making a similar point about Cuba. Free healthcare without personal freedom is a joke!

I have a friend whose spouse is from Britain and she told me that her husband was worried about his sister because she was very ill and was coughing up blood. They suspected TB but wouldn't know for sure because her tests were not for another five weeks. Five weeks! That's not only ridiculous, its criminal! This gal is the lucky one, the NHS has just announced that no one waiting for tests or procedures will wait more that 18 weeks now.

My friend had lived in London in her youth and often touted how much she loved the NHS because it was "free" and portable. Now, oddly enough, she and her husband live here in the U.S. and with her being a mother now I can attest that she does not hesitate to get the tests she and her doctors think the kids need right NOW!

This was just one anecdote, but story repeats itself over and over in Britain and Canada. In the great white north we have heard stories about 60 year old patients being denied procedures because they were old and it would not be a good use of public healthcare resources. But these people paid into the system for 40 years through exorbitant taxes. That's called rationing. Do you want that here for your mother or your grandfather?

Our own experience in this country with the VA and Medicare should be enough of a wake up call. The government can not run an efficient and effective system. Do you want to risk your health and possibly your life supporting those who would foist this upon you?

I think America and the rest of the world have to realize that a one size fits all healthcare system does not work. We need to accept a two tiered health system - one for those who can afford it and one for those who can't. The best doctors and equipment will go where the money is.

One way to ensure that most people can be served by the upper tier is to revamp the insurance system. Allow workers to shop for and buy their own plan, a plan that suits them. It would get companies out of the healthcare administration business by boiling down the whole thing to a monetary benefit on a paycheck as opposed to an entire system of administrators and coordinators. Some call it a Medical Savings Account others call it something else but the point is to make the patient the owner of his health plan. The portability problem is solved by this.

Ideas like this have been on the table for years and because they make too much sense they will never be adopted. The conservatives and Republicans who generally favor this approach have never had the backbone to fight for it and the liberals and the Democrats will have none of it because they want socialized healthcare so that the "rich" have to suffer along with the rest of us.

But the rich won't suffer, your moronic liberals, they never do. They will simple get on a jet and fly to India or Thailand where they will be able to get their tests and treatments while you sit here on your flipping high horse coughing up blood waiting for your TB test...





CW