Let’s make this real simple. Suppose you live in a house with another person and you have good health insurance that you work and pay for. Your roommate doesn’t work or has a job that either doesn’t provide health insurance or he chooses to pay for other things than a health insurance policy. Since he doesn’t have health insurance and you do, he tells you he thinks he should also have health insurance and since you have it and you make more money than he does he wonders if you would just pay for his health insurance because he “can’t afford it”.
Your first response might be , “ Why should I do that? I work so that I can improve my life with better creature comforts , greater financial security and savings for a rainy day. What makes you think I should work for your creature comforts and financial security?” Your roommate cannot supply a reason for this as it could easily be relayed to him by a poorer neighbor that he has more wealth than he does. In the vernacular of an evasive politician ( aren’t they all ? ), this translates to “ there is plenty of wealth for us ( meaning the wealth redistribution fanatics) to insure that all of the citizens of the U.S. get health care. If taxpayers can’t pay for the ones who don’t have health insurance,, they must forfeit the right to their earnings so that I ,the politician, can proclaim I have made everyone’s life better since I’ve taken from the more ambitious and hard working and doled it out to people who need something they currently don’t have.
The principle is no different if it is applied to a pair of roommates or a nation’s population. Taking by force from one person so that another can have some of what he does not have is the same thing as legalized robbery. A private citizen taking money by force from another citizen is called a robber. When a government agent takes it and via a vast redistribution network gives it to those it deems in need, this is called by politicians a noble endeavor. There is no nobility in thievery. The fact that it has never worked , as witnessed by the “experiment” in the Soviet Union and countless other socialist regimes most notably Canada and Great Britain ( which really is no longer very great ) seems to be something the politicians can’t ( or won’t ) grasp.
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Saunders are pandering to those who want health insurance without paying for it. The fact is , someone will have to pay for it. That someone is the American taxpayer. Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer you are being asked to pay for your neighbor’s health insurance. That means that if you think your rates for health insurance are too high now, imagine what they will be when you have to pay for everyone ( I’ve heard the number 40 million ) that needs it but doesn’t have it.
Now we come to the consideration of the quality we will receive under a socialistic health care system. There is no dispute that people in Canada and Britain wait a long time and cannot get some health care services provided in the United States. This is the logical result of increasing the number of recipients of government services it cannot afford to fund. Social Security and Medicare are faced with this same issue. There is rapidly approaching the point where the revenues coming in are not equivalent to those going out. This requires either more revenues coming in ( taxes or borrowing ) or reducing services (rationing and/or elimination ). In the case of nationalized medicine we can expect to see a reduction of expensive diagnostic equipment, a reduction in prescription drug availability, tighter restrictions on qualifications for needed medical care , greater taxes, more borrowing and a rationing system that would make the rationing of World War Two look like generosity itself.
Social justice is justice denied. You cannot treat some people like chattel while you reward those who claim to be have-nots just as you cannot treat some people like chattel because you reward those who claim special privileges. Justice demands leaving the earnings to those who earn them and not enabling those who refuse to earn. When the concept of a “safety net” is raised, this is only a stepping stone to government expansion of restrictions and taxes in the name of those who claim victimhood.
You will notice how vast the “safety net’ has become. There are teachers and registered nurses on food stamps. There are two family members working while their children receive “free “school meals. Those seeking the unearned are conniving daily to get government benefits that don’t cost them anything. This is what comes of putting such programs in place. Finding out how to beat the system becomes the new national ambition. This is what the politicians have wrought. And now they want to carry their message to the voters that all else has failed and they have the answer. They are not proud of it enough to call it by it’s name (Socialism) but they will admit to such monikers as “Single payer”, “A National Health Care System” or “Universal Health Care.” These misrepresentations are only cover ups for Socialized Medicine of the same brand that has been tried numerous times in history and found wanting.
Politicians of today’s persuasion always gravitate toward more and more power over the private citizen. For what else can they exploit? They back bite and accuse each other but they only exploit those who earn for they have no other source to confiscate wealth from. And this robbery is sold on the basis that there are needs to be fulfilled that only the government can equitably distribute. That their historical methods of rationing and the resultant shortages from regulation bely their theories seems to have little effect on the average voter. When these voters are polled they reply they don’t want tax cuts, more government regulation and are willing to pay higher and higher taxes if a guilt laden scenario can be tossed in their lap. Each incremental increase is presented as a so small per capita “contribution” that it would smack of stinginess to deny it to the downtrodden in the squalor of two car and two televisions households barely surviving in this land of the free ( handouts ).
If you like going to the DMV and taking a number. If you like filling out endless forms and wrangling with late payments for benefits. If you like hiring a health care form filer just as you do now with your income tax forms. And if you like seeing druggies working the system to feed their habit, you might be a Socialist.
There have been many Americans who were willing to stand up for America both on the battlefield and on the street corner via the spoken word. There have been those who spoke up and there have been those who considered the threats of socialism as poppy cock. Now as Socialized Medicine is being seriously considered in the 2016 presidential race, even the most evasive needs to wake up to what is on the horizon. There are no socialized countries that are prospering under the realities of socialism. China is communist in name only. It is not the ownership of the people’s means of production that is meeting the needs of the Chinese citizen. It is that which they denounced ( profit) that is dragging that ancient civilization into the 21st century. Russia likewise is bumbling along as a quasi-communist state unable to prosper under the residual yoke of their “noble experiment”.
And after the health care system will come the outright nationalization of all business followed by nationalization of the press. This is the trend and there is not one politician in America today that realizes the path they are pursuing. These most blatant threats to freedom must be challenged for their ignorance of history and their refusal to see the consequences of their proposals. The Republican Party lost it’s moral high ground when it turned to the conservatives and tried to demonstrate compassion by outspending the Democrats . There may not be enough voices to stem this tide at present, but remember the Marxist’s were a very small minority opposing the Czarist regime. Just imagine what a rational plan could accomplish. No one is talking about the virtues of privatization of health care and the savings and efficiencies that competition will bring. Only the education of what private enterprise has to offer will overcome the snarling rhetoric of the 2016 campaign. And those with the most to lose, the doctors and the patients consider the battle is not theirs to fight. The fact that their lives and livelihood are at stake evidently isn’t enough incentive to acquire arguments to rebuke the national healthcare avalanche. It does not speak well for what we ask our soldiers to defend.
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