Health Care

I have this same Health Care bill argument all the time, and it can be so frustrating. Most Americans believe in the capitalist system, and that our free market society was what made us great. Not all, but most. Those who don't, have a right to their opinions, but what is the sense in being American if you aren't a capitalist? Health care got screwed up when we entered a third party into the mix, and began insuring normal activity, and not just catastrophic events. Health Care in America is not a capitalistic oriented system. It used to be, when we paid our doctors directly, medical care was being provided as a service for a fee, just like taking your car to a mechanic. Would you buy insurance for changing the oil in your car? Of course not, but that is precisely what we have done in the medical industry. Even those who had great insurance in the 70s, paid the doctor directly, filed his/her own insurance, using the form provided by your employer or insurance company, and received some portion of the charges back according to the terms of the insurance policy or your employer. But by and large it was insurance against catastrophic events, like an operation, an injury, or a lethal disease. In dealing with your doctor, there was a fee that we negotiated with the doctor, the insurance company, and sometimes both. It is just natural human behavior to closely monitor the cash coming out of our pockets, not so when a third party picks up the tab, and we are required to pay only a paltry sum for the expertise of a highly skilled physician.

For those who did not have insurance in the pre-1980s era of medical care, before the expansion of government Medicare and Medicaid went about setting prices for every imaginable ailment, by a strict diagnostic code, that the government alone determined. In those times patients studied the bill closely before leaving the doctors office, and if there was a discrepancy, we would stay and ask to speak to the doctor about the charges. There were no $400 office visits in those days for 5 minutes of the doctors time.

If we couldn’t pay on the day of the service, the doctor either did or did not, according to his business model, carry our balance forward. Doctors did not have insurance experts and office managers in those days. They didn't have to. They were then, and some still are, small business owners. But more and more often doctors are going to work for a third party corporation, a hospital, or as a contractor to a number of corporations .It is now so complicated, because the federal government set prices, dictated mounds of required paperwork, and complicated the practice of medicine to such an extent that one busy doctor today can generate 3, or sometimes 4 office workers. Mal-practice insurance can be $30,000 a year or more for a single doctor depending on the type of practice. Our society is so litigious, that very few doctors will enter into the care of pregnant mothers and their children, particularly in rural areas. Why is the Congress not looking to overhaul that aspect of health care? Could it be that most legislators are also lawyers? I don't know, but I am certainly suspicious.

Government has ruined the small business owner doctor for the most part, but so far they haven’t ruined our health care system. It is far too expensive, and far too many people are unable to pay for health care insurance coverage, but individuals are hampered, while groups with a lobby(corporations, unions, special interests, and particularly government workers) are favored under our current laws. This is what we need to change. We do not need to place the industry under government control. That has never worked for anything except the military, and even that has not worked too well since WWII, when the civilian leaders began to micro manage the work of generals. Decision by special interest lobby or political interest does not work!

We are now insured for everything, including the common cold, and even though we all know the doctor can’t fix a cold, since we only have to pay the co-pay to see a doctor, huge numbers of people with insurance go to the doctor at every little sniffle, sore toe, or cut finger, thus abusing the system, and running up huge administrative costs for everyone. It's a never ending cycle. The more government is involved, the worse it gets. The worse it gets the more government intervention. There is no good way to go back to the 70s now, and if Congress passes the current legislation, we will never be able to get back to the imperfect place we are today. We will become worse off every single year, until the four monstrosity entitlement programs in this country perpetuate our demise. It could come a lot sooner than you might think.

This legislation will also increase the number of people abusing the system by some percentage of the 30 million who are expected to receive government provided health care insurance, at a time when we are already seeing a shortage of General Practitioners, and Internists. This will over burden an already over worked medical profession and result in long waits for appointments, diagnostic procedures, and critical care for the majority of Americans.

This is not to say doctors and hospitals particularly do not bear part of the blame. They do. Rather than push back against the heavy hand of government, when Medicare pays 80% of the cost of any given service, and Medicaid pays 70% of that same cost per service, the doctors and hospitals charge privately insured patients 130% of the cost of providing any given service or procedure. In addition, office visits are billed in the $200 to $400 range, even though insurance companies pay on average only 50 to $100. Those without insurance are expected to pay the full amount, while everyone with insurance pays a small fraction of that cost, including what the insurance company covers. It is difficult to blame the medical profession. Doctors and hospitals cannot remain in the business of caring, healing, and researching with no profit. Profit, and the entrepreneurial spirit is precisely what has made the United States the leader of the world. The list of 20th century achievement in this country surpasses all of the years of the human race combined in every aspect of our lives including medicine, communications, travel, comfort, convenience. There is almost nothing we have failed to improve exponentially. And we have been motivated by profit and the will to succeed for our own sake. That isn't corrupt. It is who we are, and who we should remain, if we are to survive as the world leader.

When my grandfather was a boy, in the 1890s, you could die from a cut on the leg. Everyone who had a heart attack would most assuredly die, or live a life bedridden as a result of any type of heart attack. Now we have vaccines for smallpox, one of humanity’s most deadly diseases. Polio, that rendered one of our most powerful Presidents a cripple, and maimed or killed children indiscriminately has been virtually eliminated. The mumps, measles, and other child hood diseases have been for the most part conquered. Emergency room physicians have a remarkable record in saving the lives of the critically injured and ill persons who make it to the hospital in time. The list of medical achievement is phenomenal in all but a few diseases the medical industry is still working to conquer. If we go down this road to national health care, and that is what is on the table, regardless of how the politicians in Washington dress it up, we will render the medical profession in this country forever mediocre.

My class in high school had 10 or so kids who were exceptional students. All of those students have done well, but the best among them became doctors. The majority of doctors in our country today are doctors precisely because they are the best and brightest we have to offer. I am not implying that profit is the primary motive for a career in medicine, but it is the best way, in this country, to guarantee you wind up making a good living. For the prospect of being a productive member of society, financially secure, well thought of in their community, and ensuring the well being of their family, the best among us, more often than not, take up the practice of medicine. When we take this step down the road to socialized medicine, we are forever assuring that we will leave our children and grandchildren with mediocre, unionized doctors. The best and brightest will not go into medicine when the government dictates where they practice, what they practice, what they charge, and what they earn. If you believe I am wrong in making this statement, you either know nothing of the human spirit, or you are so wrapped up in your own world, you can’t see the light of day anywhere else.

If the people we elected to Congress went there for the purpose of doing what is right, we might be able to depend on government, but that is a pipe dream. We have career politicians after 233 years. You must have a vast treasure of contributions, or be extremely wealthy already to successfully run for national office. If the Congress members are not wealthy when they are elected for the first time, they most certainly will be in very short order. Congress appears more and more like the ruling class our ancestors left Europe to escape nearly 400 years ago. Does anyone see the irony here? Have we come full circle? Twenty years ago this year, the biggest social experiment in history, failed miserably and crumbled from the inside out, while we had one of our most prosperous decades. This is still a current event, and only recently available in text books. The progressives are writing the text books, and they are lying about why socialism or communism failed. Our own text books lie to our children. A few have grown children that were lied to, and some of us chose to set the record straight with our own childern, but far too many were not aware of what was being taught, and we are quickly becoming two generations deep in progressively educated voters.

Words do have meaning, particularly the words Socialism, Marxism, Leninism, and Communism. Each one of those words has a different meaning to most. I assert the only difference, really, is how corrupt and even violent the central government is willing to be while redistributing the wealth from those who have, and giving it to first the government, and then whatever happens to be left over, equally among everyone else, so that all citizens are equally hungry. It has been proven over and over that the socialist dream is just that, and in the end they always run out of other people’s money. Men will not do their best when they aren’t rewarded. It is a guarantee of mediocrity at best, and thuggery at every layer.

I simply cannot fathom any American not seeing the fallacy of government health care. There is nothing worth having that is free. Welfare begats more welfare. We learned that lesson in the 1990s when Bill Clinton reduced the rolls of welfare dramatically. The next democratic president has forgotten that lesson? Or perhaps, his intent is to enslave the people to the government! Our founders went to great lengths to prevent a powerful central government from developing, realizing how dangerous it would be to freedom and the republic. Thomas Jefferson warned us what would happen.

The demwits of the current majority in Congress are going to pass some sort of health care legislation in the neighborhood of $1 Trillion, as they calculate it. It could be 10 times, 20 times, even even 100 times worse based on previous Congressional estimates for entitlement programs. Medicare has $17 Trillion in unfunded liabilities right now. They tell us they are going to use savings from the corruption in that entitlement program to fund another medical entitlement, and we believe it??? My God, this is ludicrous. If we could reduce Medicare by $500 billion over the next ten years, are we not first obligated to pay down the unfunded liabilities of Medicare? Neither our President, nor our Congress ever mentions that. Why not? Do we ask? If so, do you receive an answer? Why not? Each American owes $345,000 on the unfunded liabilities of our government, if equally divided right now. We cannot sustain another entitlement program. The rest of the world is about to replace the dollar with a basket of currencies that does not include our dollar. Our wealth will disappear like an apparition. It will put us on a one way road we will not be able to reverse…..ever, at least not without an overhaul to our entire society. It will be the end of the republic as we learned of it as children.

This is the one thing that can destroy us, Here is a link to the real time debt clock. http://www.usdebtclock.org/ Look in the bottom right corner. We are bankrupt already. The Fed monetized $1 Trillion in debt on 8/18/2009. That is doubling the amount of dollars in circulation just as info. And yet, they have continued pumping more than $2B a day into the banks in additional currency. There is a method the Fed can use to pull all of that money out of circulation. They will have to raise the interests rates, which correspondingly drives inflation. After the Jimmy Carter years, the interest rates peaked at 21%, in order to resolve the printing of money we did not have. The longer we wait, the more dollars printed, the higher the rates will have to go. Do you understand hyper-inflation?

What do our leaders expect will happen when the rest of the world stops using our Fiat currency. It is already happening. There is a reason gold is $1200 an oz. today. There is a reason Obama just went to China, and a reason the Communists capitalists chided him about our exploding liabilities. This is not about health care insurance. This is about saving our republic! Every American owes it to himself, his children, and the country to stop this out of control Congress. The republicans started this. The democrats are putting the pedal to the medal after we threw out the republicans for their over spending. What is left for us to do. Every American of voting age must take part, not only with respect to going to the polling booth on election day, but to ask the questions, research the actions of our government, compare your results to the mistakes of history, and ultimately replace any elected official who is guilty of over spending, and keeping us in the prison of debt. Save our Republic Now?