“Free
health care for all is not only a no brainer but immoral to dismiss.” That was in the email I got from my successful,
highly-educated daughter in 2010, just before every Democrat in Congress voted
to implement Obamacare , also known as the ironically-named “Affordable Care
Act”.
They also simultaneously voted to exempt themselves from the
“benefits” of Obamacare, and instead bravely shouldered the burdens of
maintaining their own privately-run luxury healthcare program.
Now it appears that almost all Democrats in Congress, at
least among their leadership, favor implementing a “single-payer” (i.e.,
government owned and operated) healthcare system. For you, of course, not for them.
Do you seriously believe that Bernie Sanders,
Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez or any of the other Dem single-payer advocates have any intention
of giving up their Cadillac private healthcare to go on single-payer themselves?
As in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, some animals are more
equal than others. One set of laws are for
those who are ruled, and another for the rulers.
But they really, really believe that a socialized
government-
run healthcare system is for your own good. The fact that it dramatically expands the
government and their political power has nothing to do with it. And the ignorant and gullible “free
healthcare is a no brainer” crowd swallows it whole.
The latest Dem tactic is to call it “Medicare for All”. This is intentionally misleading. Whatever it is called, the result is the
same. The entire supply chain of medical
services, from drugs and medical devices, to doctors, nurses, and hospitals all
come under the complete control of the government.
When you only have one buyer (i.e., “single-payer”),
everyone in the chain is forced to become their providers, work for them and do
their bidding. It can be no other way.
In the new healthcare supply chain, we give up our role as
“customer” to the government. Instead, as
patients we become only the “end product”.
The communist constitution of the old USSR (Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics) promised the people free healthcare, free education, and a
right to affordable housing, to achieve equality and “social justice”. Instead, the government bankrupted the
country’s economy and impoverished the people.
The truly horrifying realization here is that this may be the platform
of the Democrat party in 2020.
In Oleg Atbashian’s great book, Hotel USSR, he describes the horrors and insanity of life in a socialist
system.
…my
stomach problems kept sending me back to the hospital every few months, without
anyone bothering to explain why, or how to make it stop. The state covered the expenses, but at some
point I wished I could see a paid private doctor who would give me his full
attention instead of the lab rat treatment.
Then I realized that even if private doctors existed in our country,
most people including me and my parents would have no money to pay them. Why did our working people end up so
poor? Because the state had taken all
their money to pay for their free substandard healthcare, whether they liked it
or not. This was the invisible trap in
which we all lived.
The
reality is that getting anything for “free” from your government requires
giving up your income, liberty, and individual freedoms in exchange for a
rationed, poor quality product.
According
to the Committee for a Responsible
Federal Budget,
a single-payer system as proposed by Sen. Sanders would double our national
debt, adding almost $19 trillion to our already unsustainable debt burden. They estimate that the debt would rise to
154% of US GDP (instead of a projected 86%) by 2026.
This
means that our government-issued healthcare (aka “Medicare for All” or
“Berniecare”), would soon become unsustainable as well. Aside from bankrupting the country and
impoverishing the people, healthcare would become a carefully rationed
commodity. Our lives would be placed in
the merciful hands of unaccountable government bureaucrats to decide our fate.
Government
agencies run by such people couldn’t be abused, could they? They would never think of delaying or
withholding necessary healthcare from people who have unacceptably deplorable
political opinions or wear MAGA hats, would they? Of course, some might believe that those
racists and Nazis should get what they deserve.
And
then, there are those protected classes that cannot be denied access to health
services under any circumstances, such as illegal immigrants, transsexuals, and
women wanting abortions. That leaves the
scraps for the rest of us to fight over.
Eventually
the inevitable need must arise for the much-derided concept of “death
panels”. With rationing, it is essential
that decisions are made over how much care people are entitled to. Those who contribute the least to the state
are also the ones who require the most expensive healthcare.
If you
are chronically ill or in the last years of your life, will the government
decide you are on the wrong side of a cost/benefit ratio? It appears that some officials in NY and VA
are currently willing to consider “post-birth” abortions of unwanted
babies. Is that not a “death panel”
function?
A
six-month-old Gallup survey showed that socialism was
viewed favorably by 57% of Democrats and 16% of Republicans. That’s enough of a majority to swing
elections and affect the direction of the country. Apparently, the lessons of the failures of
socialism and socialized medicine throughout the world have not been learned.
In 2009
under Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan healthcare system was touted as a
breakthrough in “participatory democracy”.
In the fawning words of Venezuelanalysis.com:
The right to health care
is guaranteed in the Venezuelan Constitution, which was written and ratified by
the people in 1999. Through implementing a state-funded social program
called Barrio Adentro, or inside the barrio, free comprehensive health care is
available to all Venezuelans. Beginning in June 2003 through a trade pact with
Cuba, Venezuela began to bring Cuban doctors, medical technology, and
medications into rural and urban communities free of charge in exchange for
low-cost oil. The 1.5 million dollar per year program expanded to provide a
broad network of small neighborhood clinics, larger regional clinics, and
hospitals which aim to serve the entire Venezuelan population. …Chavez has
referred to this new health care system as the "democratization of health
care" stating that "health care has become a fundamental social right
and the state will assume the principal role in the construction of a
participatory system for national public health."
As of a
year ago, February 2018, NPR reported:
The entire Venezuelan
health care system is on the verge of
collapse, says Francisco Valencia, head of the public health advocacy group
Codevida. Some hospitals lack electricity, and more than 13,000 doctors have
left Venezuela in the past four years in search of better opportunities.
"They don't give
food to the patients in the hospital," Valencia tells Here & Now's Peter O'Dowd. "They don't have
the proper medical supplies to take care of the people who go to the emergency
[room] like gloves, like every basic thing they need for an emergency."
It
only took nine years for this socialized healthcare system to go from riches to
rags. It could be credibly argued that
it was the fault of the failing economy in Venezuela. But do we want to have our access to
life-or-death medical treatment dependent on the relative health of the US
economy?
History
has shown that giving up individual freedoms and ceding power to government is
a fatally-flawed idea. Sometimes the
true motives of our political betters are revealed. In 2012, the Democratic National Convention
released a video
featuring the meme, “Government is the only thing we all belong to”.
Thank
you, no.
Andrew Thomas
