Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Health Care Crisis?

Health Care Crisis?: "

20090618-healthcareThe big issue of the day seems to be “Obamacare.” In 1992, when they try to ram through “Hillarycare,” there was also a huge controversy. The issue died almost immediately when someone stood up and said “The emperor has no clothes. There is no “Health care crisis” that needs to be solved by stripping Americans of the right to choose their own doctors and putting one sixth of the U.S. economy under the control of the same bureaucrats who run the post office.” Yikes!


When professional politicians, people who have never worked outside of politics, power and bureaucracy in their lives, try to push through a plan like this, you can be sure of only one thing: it has nothing to do with “the people” or “health care.”


Fully 85% of Americans not only have health insurance, but they are mostly quite happy and satisfied with their quality of health care. They should be. American healthcare is the best in the world. There is no other country that has more and better doctors, and more and better treatment, for more aches, pains and diseases than the United States. People from all over the world, if they can afford it; come to America to be treated at the very best clinics in the world.


In fact, one of the biggest businesses in America is building hospitals and clinics along the Canadian border to take care of Canadians who are fleeing from their socialized, single payer, bureaucratic, bankrupt, and disastrously inefficient healthcare system. Even Canadian politicians are known to fly Canadian government airplanes down to the U.S. to get medical treatment because they have to wait in line like everyone else to get treated in Canada.


The reason that this “crisis” is being created at this time is to try to rush it through Congress before anyone reads the fine print in the bill. The fact is that this is a “power grab” and has little or nothing to do with health care and health insurance.


By the way, did you notice that they have now stopped calling it a “health care crisis” and started calling it a “health insurance crisis” and are attempting to make the insurance companies the bad guys in this equation?


The people trying to push this bill through Congress know that if they can move most Americans into a government health insurance/health care plan; they can manipulate them and get their votes year after year.


In considering every political action, you can use the Italian method of analysis: “Que bene? Que paga?” This is Italian for “Who benefits? Who pays?” This whole manufactured “crisis” has only one purpose and one purpose alone: it is to buy votes with other peoples money.


In America today, the something-for-nothing, free money, entitlement craze has swept the land like a mental/emotional epidemic. Everyone has the idea that they can get something they have not paid for, and do not deserve, at the expense of someone else. Do you notice how often they use the words “people earning under $250,000 will not pay a dime in additional taxes.”


The fact is that “Free money makes people crazy.” It makes them believe impossible things, like they can have things they haven’t paid for. The easiest and cheapest way to buy votes is to offer to give people free money. This the lowest and most corrupt behavior of politicians at all levels.


There is no health care crisis because, effective in 1986, every person needing medical care in the U.S. is automatically covered when they go to any hospital or clinic, whether they can pay for it or not. This, by the way, was passed by the Ronald Reagan administration.


The “health insurance” crisis is largely manufactured. Fully, 85% of Americans already have health insurance. Of the 47 million Americans who supposedly do not have health insurance, many of them are between jobs. 12 million of them are illegal immigrants who cannot come out of the shadows to buy health insurance, so they simply go the local hospital or clinic and get their health care for free.


30% of the uninsured are young people aged 20 to 34 who will not buy insurance at any price because it is too expensive, and because they are quite healthy. It is simply not a good investment for them.


Another 30% of the “uninsured” earn more than $50,000 per year and simply choose not to buy health insurance so that they can spend it on lifestyle. Ten to 15 million people already qualify for Medicare or other government plans but have not applied for it.


When you strip all the numbers away, you arrive at about 6-8 million people who genuinely cannot afford health insurance. These people can be easily covered with the same kind of voucher that is handed out for food. Solving this problem does not require a complete disruption of the entire American way of life and a massive government program that puts hundreds of billions, and eventually trillions of dollars into the hands of bureaucrats who we know will not spend it well.


They say that this will only cost a trillion dollars. However, in the fine print, they admit that most of the “uninsured” won’t be covered, even if a trillion dollars is spent. When Medicare was introduced in the 60’s, they predicted that it would reach a cost of 12 billion dollars by 1990. The actual cost was 120 billion dollars, an increase of 1000% over the projections. This is standard government accounting, and everybody knows it.


One final point: somehow, people have gotten the idea that buying health insurance is like gambling in Las Vegas. Sometimes you win; sometimes you lose. This is nonsense!


Health insurance is simply “pre-paid medical costs.” Nobody makes a profit buying health insurance. When you buy health insurance, it is based on your health history. Just as when you buy car insurance, your rates are determined by your driving history. The more than 1000 health insurance companies that compete with each other throughout the United States simply pool risks, smoothing out the costs of health care so that those insured are not hit with huge costs all at once. This pooling enables people to join with thousands or millions of others to bring the average annual costs of health care down for the individual who needs it at the moment.


Another myth: Health care is not a “right.” Nothing is a right if it has to be taken away from someone else under the threat of fine or imprisonment. Health care is not a right, just as food care and housing care and car care and everything else, are not rights either. Health care is a good, a service that must be bought and paid for by someone, somehow.


The national argument is now focusing in on a tiny group of people with “pre-existing conditions.” The power hungry politicians are attempting to upset the finest health care system in the world to protect a few people, many of whom have lied blatantly on their health insurance applications forms, from having their health insurance cancelled after they become sick. In most cases, it turns out that they had preexisting conditions and they simply lied through their teeth in order to cheat and deceive the insurance company into giving them a policy that they did not deserve and were not willing to pay for.


Even if they were completely innocent, the suggestion is that people should be able to buy health insurance after they become sick, and the insurance companies should pay for it by raising premiums on everyone else. Imagine if you could wait to buy car insurance until after you had an accident? No one would buy a policy until they crashed up their car. That is what will happen if the crazies pass a law forbidding insurance companies to insure anyone at the same price paid for by everyone.


Of course, the system is not perfect. But the free market, based on the free choices of individuals like yourself, working with the finest doctors, nurses, pharmacies, hospitals, clinics and yes, health insurance companies, is a far better solution to the phony “health insurance crisis” than putting the same kind of people who run the post office in charge of your family’s health care.


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