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In SOCIALISM PART I last week I attempted to make four points
Point # 1, DISINCENTIVATION: with it there is no way for the nation to move forward.
Point # 2, WEALTH REDISTRIBUTION: Obama said his overall intention, if elected President, is wealth redistribution. There is a second and very different method of redistributing wealth.
Point #3, IT WON’T PENCIL: Senator Bernie Sanders and his protégé, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are passionate about their version of socialism for the US, but the real question is, did they fail 4th grade math? It would appear so.
Part 4, BOTTOM LINE: we cannot afford socialism.
The centerpiece for the Democrat/Liberal/Progressive/ Socialist agenda for the next 22 months leading up to the 2020 presidential election will be health care; whether it is a One-Payer System, Medicare For All or some other National Health Care system.
Notwithstanding that Socialism has no virtues, why are Democrats/Liberals/Socialists/Progressives moving so far left? Socialism is all about “free” and “free” buys votes. More “free” buys more votes and lots more “free” buys lots more votes. And when their constituency is various identity groups, they can craft a “free” program that will appeal to every group. It may be good politics but it will eventually end badly for America for a number of reasons and not being able to afford it may be the least of our worries.
On 3 November 2018, Scott W. Atlas, MD, —a Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and a member of Hoover Institution’s Working Group on Health Care Policy— wrote a detailed and insightful article for the Wall Street Journal, entitled The False Promise of Medicare for All.
The purpose of this paper is to draw from his research and get you ready for the socialist barrage of untrue, unsupported BS they are going to use to convince their identity groups that “free health care” can become a viable, popular, fair reality.
Obama promised a better health care system, Affordable Health Care which has proven to be just the opposite, unaffordable. As if Obama Care is not bad enough, there is a strong possibility that Single Payer, although a simple, catchy title, could be even worse.
Atlas points out that in the five years of ObamaCare, insurance premiums have doubled for individuals and risen 140% for families while deductibles have increased substantially. Additionally, a record pace of consolidations among hospitals and physician practices, will raise health care prices as fewer hospitals compete for payers.
For California alone, Single Payer Health Care will cost an estimated $400 billion a year, more than twice their current health care annual budget. Nationwide, Medicare For All will cost more than $32 trillion over its first decade. DOUBLING federal personal income and corporate taxes will not be enough to pay for it.
Around the world, in the past half century, nationalized health care programs have consistently failed to provide timely, high quality medical care compared with the U.S. system. The consequences are pain, suffering, death, personal disability and forgone wages.
Last year a record 4.2 million patients were on England’s National Health Service waiting lists; with 362,600 patients waited longer than four months for treatment while 95,252 waited longer than 6 months. All that waiting was after having received their diagnosis and referral.
In Canada last year, the median wait time between seeing a general practitioner and following up with a specialist was 10.2 weeks. Wait time between seeing that specialist and beginning treatment was about 5 months.
In nationalized health care systems, even patients referred for URGENT TREATMENT often wait months. In Britain, more than 19% wait 2 months or longer to begin their first URGENT CANCER TREATMENT while 17% wait more than 4 months for brain surgery.
Canadians with heart disease wait 3 months for their FIRST TREATMENT. If you need life-changing orthopedic surgery in Canada—like hip or knee replacement—you likely wait 10 months.
In contrast to England and Canada, most US patients face little or no wait for urgent care.
A Single Payer program is no promise of access to quality medical care. If brought to the US the only reliable promise would be worse health care and higher taxes. America’s poor and middle class would suffer the most because—let’s face reality—rich folks don’t need health insurance of any type, they can just write a check and probably move to the front of the line or join a quality private-practice health care group.
Whatever nationalized health system it is, WAKE THE HELL UP AMERICA, it will NOT be “free”. You will pay like your have never paid before. There is a saying going around that you will never believe how expensive medical care can be until it is “free”. Some years ago, the British Liberal Party sold their people on a national healthcare concept as “free” and their resulting taxes rank right up there among the highest in the world
FACT, every country that has tried nationalized health care has ended up with less quality health care professionals, much higher taxes, longer wait times for care, pain, suffering, permanent disability, forgone wages and in many cases premature death. This is not an overstatement.
But, you say, we are not the UK or Canada, the US can do it better. You are certainly entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts. The fact is we have had government-run medical care in this country for decades; it’s called The Veterans Administration and it has been such a dismal failure that the whole process has been under scrutiny for the past several years and is not fixed yet. It is clearly documented that veterans have died waiting for an appointment or treatment.
Currently, less than one third of Americans are enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid. Fact: between 2004 and 2017 “mistakes and improper Medicare and Medicaid payments” averaged $48 billion per year. $48 BILLION. Does that support making Medicare available for all? Do we therefor surmise that all that graft, corruption, mistakes and improper payment will magically disappear? I am much more inclined to believe the $48 billion will grow right along with the times-three expansion of the program. Why?
Answer. What makes you believe for one minute that the federal government can effectively and efficiently “run” any new big program? The federal government has a pretty clear and remarkable history when it comes to “running” big, national programs. What do the Postal Service established 1775, Social Security 1935, Fannie Mae 1938, War on Poverty 1964, Medicare and Medicaid 1965, and Freddie Mac 1970 all have in common? Two things, they are big federal government programs run by the government and they are all broke. And the Democrats/Liberals/Socialists/Progressives all expect you to believe them when they call it “free” and that it will be successful!
Question for the Democrats out there. Which of the facts above don’t you understand? You are part of an intelligent electorate; how can you possibly be sucked in to this scam? Just listen to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talking to America about how we will pay for One Payer or Medicare For All. She begns with cuts in Defense.
Ok, Alexandria, I will “ see” your “cut” in Defense spending and raise you to completely disbanding the military; take the Defense budget to zero for the next four years. That “saving” will still fall short of what the government needs to support Medicare For All for ONE year. It’s 4th grade math Alexandria and you just don’t get it.
Having said all of the above, the bottom line is not about dollars, it is about something bigger, something much more important, something that IS America. Too often we use a shorthand to define our Democracy as simply a system of free elections and we leave it at that.
As stated by Isaiah Berlin more that 30 years ago, “The defining proposition of democracy is that it mandates means (elections, parliaments, markets) but not ends. Democracy leaves the goals of life entirely up to the individual. Where the totalitarian, socialistic states decree life’s purposes.
Furthermore, the late, brilliant writer Charles Krauthammer put it more succinctly—I paraphrase, “we must fight for a vision of limited government that, while providing for the helpless, is committed above all to guaranteeing individual liberty and pursuit of one’s own ends.”
The Democratic party has moved so far left in an effort to be heard above the shouts of the “free” radical left and socialists, they have forgotten about America. They have betrayed the party of FDR, of Harry Truman, of JFK. They are willing to bet America’s future on winning an election. They are willing to go forward— leaning so far to the left— with a single-minded mission of bringing down the current administration out of a pure passion of hate.
I’m disgusted, dismayed, but mostly just disappointed in part of my America.
Marv Covault