The ever-expanding role of government in healthcare provides an excellent example of Ludwig von Mises’ warning that “The Middle of the Road Leads to Socialism.” Beginning in the 1940s, government policies distorted the health care market, causing prices to rise and denying many Americans access to quality care. Congress reacted to the problems caused by their prior interventions with new interventions, such as the HMO Act, ERISA, EMTLA, and various federal entitlement programs. Each new federal intervention not only failed to fix the problems it was supposedly created to solve, it created new problems, leading to calls for even more new federal interventions. This process culminated in 2010, when Congress passed Obamacare.
Contrary to the claims of some of its opponents, Obamacare is not socialized medicine. It is corporatized medicine. After all, the central feature of Obamacare is the mandate that all Americans buy health insurance from private health insurance companies. And, as with previous government interventions in the marketplace, Obamacare is not only failing to correct the problems caused by prior federal laws, it is creating new problems.
Consider the almost weekly stories about how Obamacare is causing health insurance premiums to rise, causing employees to lay off workers or reduce their workers’ hours, and causing doctors to leave the profession. Also, consider the problems the administration is already having administering the federal exchanges and other parts of the health care law.
I fully expect the implosion of Obamacare to continue, and the supporters of nationalized health care to use Obamacare’s failures to push for a Canadian-style “single payer” health care system. Unfortunately, some Obamacare opponents fail to see that the problem is not just Obamacare, but all government interference with health care. These Obamacare opponents advocate replacing Obamacare with “Obamacare lite.” But economic law teaches us that “Obamacare lite” will be no more successful than Obamacare.
In order to win the battle for health freedom, those who oppose nationalized health care must have the courage to advocate for a complete free market in health care. Enhanced individual tax credits and enhanced use of Health Savings Accounts (HSA) are just two polices that could help restore a free-market in health care by putting control over the health care dollar back in the hands of the people. A good place to start would be to repeal Obamacare’s restrictions on HSAs.
Long-term group insurance contracts could ensure that those with pre-existing conditions could obtain coverage. Under such a contract, individuals could pool resources to purchase a group policy that would cover any and all problems any member might develop over time. Businesses, churches, community organizations, and even fraternities and sororities could offer these types of contracts.
Negative outcomes insurance, where patients waive the right to sue for medical errors in exchange for guaranteed payouts to those harmed, could reduce the burden of malpractice litigation.
Other free-market health care reforms that could make the health care market more competitive and lower the cost of health care include allowing individuals to purchase insurance from across state lines, removing restrictions on physician-owned hospitals, and reducing the regulatory power of the Food and Drug Administration.
Some will say it is unrealistic to advocate replacing Obamacare with a pure free-market system, but in fact it is unrealistic to expect anything less than a true free-market to provide quality health care for Americans at all income levels. Continuing on the “middle of the road” in health care by mixing free-markets with government spending and regulations will only continue to take us on the road to socialized health care.
Ron Paul is a former U.S. Congressman from Texas and the leader of the pro-liberty, pro-free market movement in the United States. His weekly column – reprinted with permission – can be found here.
40 comments
What a dick.
Short response for a short attention span. Explain who is the dick and why or else ambiguity will lead others to believe that you are aware of the totality of the situation at hand with respect to this bogus health care reform.
If it were not for dopes like the Pauls, we would have single-payer and be done with it.
Duh.. When Obama said in the 2008 election cycle that he would push for a single payer system, he lied. He never even tried for single payer. He did more to prevent single payer than any Paul opinion ever could.
The only thing remotely close was the public option, but that got scrapped quickly too.
If it were not for big government dopes always interfering with free market exchange, free and affordable care would be available to all.
You are wrong. Central planning is the way to lower prices.
There are many examples of government run markets lowering price while also increasing quality.
Name one.
That’s easy. All of the nations of western Europe, Canada and Australia provide health care to their citizens. They spend a fraction of what the US does on health care. Their citizens live longer, are healthier, and have a lower infant mortality rate than citizens of the US. In every poll the citizens of those nations are happier with their health care system than people in the US are with their health care.
What measure do you propose to use for judging?
You know there is some effect of mass-marketing pharmaceuticals. In Europe, people try to live healthily and avoid using excessive amounts of pills. In the US doctors with many respects are pill pushers for big pharma.
Have you been to Europe? I ask because I have spent a couple years there and one striking tendency that I noticed was the ability of the public to form into protest groups in order to push back against corporate interest which is out of line with the people. The media there does a much better job of showing the protests and reality of the situation at hand.
The US fails miserably in these categories. Also, it is not uncommon to pay 50% of your income in for the universal health care and educational expenditures. In the US where consumerism is king this would cripple the economy and undermine the material well-being of all.
If you want people to be happy they must be active. That means kicking the TV’s to the curb, getting one’s ass off the couch and being an active member within the community. Big pharma getting federal funding to push drugs like antidepressants (cause depression oddly enough) and Ritalin (pharmaceutical meth which was first developed in Switzerland and could not be sold there as the parents were simply not naive enough to do so and then marketed quite successively in the US) is not going to increase your happiness.
You must keep in mind that we are dealing with separate systems here with separate parameters and the constraints in the US such as epic obesity will destroy the economy if we try to socialize medicine today.
The correct answer if you really wish to get to universal health is not to cram it through without forethought, but to start the process with education. The US’s horrible education (excluding colleges which are often seen as the best in the world, but on account of all of the H1 visas and ample funding that will be crushed with the AHA and other asinine laws) must be addressed first and foremost. If we start anywhere else then the chances of failure are at least an order of magnitude higher.
People that eat fast food everyday should hardly get health insurance at productive people’s expense. This is just philosophically absurd!!!
Of course I been to Europe, many times. I also have relatives who live in Canada. You use the standard Republican answer to my observations, which goes something like this:
“Yea, but its not because of the health care system. It must be something else, because if their health care system is making them healthier, we are wrong. So there must be some other reason they are healthier.”
So you didn’t actually read my response. That’s fine.
There is a reason for everything and a source for every problem. The US is not like the countries you just mentioned in as much as people taking care of themselves. The cultures are also drastically different. There the family is all important and in the US we are breaking down the family unit and making people more loyal to the state than to their own kin. Russia did this at one point and the reason was to expand their military industrial complex and this is the reason that we do it here today. There can be no progress unless education is made a priority and sadly this is not the case in the US.
Education is experiencing a huge artificial inflation in its costs and less people are being educated. The college degree today is for the most part the equivalent of the high school diploma of the first half of the 20th century.
If you want to make a difference then get out of your house and tutor people free of charge. This will actually help society at large instead of relying on a mythical creature known as benevolent government to do your work for you. Sorry if this sounds harsh, but people are damn near brain washed to believe that government is the answer to personal responsibility which it is not.
I am an engineer and studying systems is what I do. I promise you that which system (country) we are talking about is important to understanding how a particular change in a variable of that system will cause the overall system to be changed and so with the differences that I have tried to elucidate the fact that the systems are quite different and a change in variable here cannot at all be assumed to have the same result as a same change of the same variable there.
Also, please refrain from trying to place me into a Republican position because I am so far right and left that you will be lost trying to place me in these made-up, dichotomic categorizations. I am for what is best for everyone… no more and no less.
Hey! He only asked for one! You don’t have to overwhelm him with hard facts!
If it were not for big government dopes always interfering with free market exchange, free and affordable care would be available to all.
Single payer means you get to ride your crotch rocket off a cliff coming to near death and having someone else who is more responsible pick up the tab at the hospital. This is life we have to be responsible for our own decisions or else we will destroy the productive capacity of good people without much benefit to society at large.
Also, to want universal health care “for the good of society” while beating at the war drums and cheering on government intervention by force in other countries is just a bit hypocritical at best.
The nationalistic fervor that many citizens have is a mental disease that precipitates the problem in lieu of the solution. But, what can we do?? Media sells us on all kinds of absurdities. The answer is to be as informed as we can be. Europe has universal healthcare, but they also lack the innovative ability of free people which provides for the material wealth of all people within the society at large because of their own self-imprisonment. At 50% taxation plus sales tax anybody could afford way better healthcare through an unmanipulated and government protected free market. Competitive forces allow prices to drop, but for those in control this is a carnal sin and must be legislated against at all costs.
We are not feudal serfs yet, but that time may be quickly approaching!
“Single payer means you get to ride your crotch rocket off a cliff
coming to near death and having someone else who is more responsible pick up the
tab at the hospital.”
Not really, if the person who rode the crotch rocket off of a cliff made
$1Million EUR that following year, his taxes would of paid for himself, plus
many others who also were harmed.
I am a self employed engineer like yourself living in the US. I make roughly 6
figures per year, and my complaint is that the “individual” insurance
market premiums in America are absurd. I am paying
roughly $1,500 per month for health insurance. These premiums were even more
absurd 10 years ago, I was paying $1,000 per month back then, way before
Obamacare. The “free market” rates in the individual market have been
a scam for many years, there is an oligopoly going on in health care.
I am healthy and young my insurance rates should not be that high, but the
“market” says that they should be that high because 95% of folks need
their employer to “subsidize” their healthcare
premiums via “grouping”. In a “free market” everyone would
be able to buy health insurance at an affordable rate just like car insurance, folks
don’t “group” together to get “wholesale” pricing for car insurance,
why do it in healthcare?
if I add in my federal tax + state income tax + the cost of my monthly
insurance premiums on an annualized basis my tax rate is well above 50%,
actually it’s 53%, if I move to Italy or Spain my tax rate would actually be lower,
as for my income bracket the tax rate in Italy is 48%.
It looks like Europe is a better deal these days for self employed folks who
can work from anywhere in the world. Hell for 48% in Europe I’ll get better
health care in Europe than what I have in the US and I’ll actually pay less in
taxes. If you’re self employed in America making low six figures you’re better
off in Europe as you get more for your money out there.
I concur sir. At this point for those most productive and in the six figure salary range Europe is a better bet for success, but I’d not stop at Europe if I were you as Asia has some very hot spots for people like us where taxation would be far less than Europe can offer with the extra funds you can buy a top-notch doctor there as well and with the local low cost of manufacturing products an engineer could actually do quite well in the Asian Pacific.
Honestly, I would rather not have any insurance and just stay healthy and pay out of pocket. I’m riding through my life in a manner that if I would faced with death, then sure as hell would not go kicking and screaming. We live one life and most people try to live it so carefully with so much attention to security that they never truly experience life at all. I’m a bit old fashioned I guess, but I don’t expect others to provide for me and believe that the current system is an outright scam. Accounting for all insurances and all premiums we pay in more than double what is ever paid out here in the US. I good on adding to the profit margin of a company whose product I do not want.
My health insurance is necessary according to my employer and current laws. The premium is about $1700/mo and I pay $475/mo of that. I use about $1000 of services each year and so I don’t see the reason to have it especially according to the philosophy by which I live. I live in an “extreme” fashion and death could come at any time because of my high risk lifestyle. Seeing this I am not sure why anyone would want to willing provide me coverage at another’s expense.
So under you pay as you go system, what happens when you show up at the hospital for a heart transplant and the doctor says, before we get started you will need to deposit your first $750,000 with my nurse and we will talk about the balance later.
I believe I made it clear before, but I will state it clearly here:
Under the pay as you go, I would accept death in the event that I could not pay. I am not afraid of my end and the fact that so many are is a sign that no one is really out “living” their life. How many people lived lives before us? How many have come and gone. Honestly, me being gone is not the end of the world for everyone else so I’m not sure why people are so hung up on living forever.
I’m approaching 30 years old and have lived an incredible life thus far. In the scope of human endeavors I have done it all and knowing that helps to accept a fate instead of asking someone else to bite the bullet and pay on my behalf.
Maybe there should be an opt out policy for people of my “unique” nature. Sir, would you jump out of a perfectly good airplane just for the rush?? Why yes I would.
Do you really want us in your health care system? To say yes is to not see the picture fully.
Also, for the typical person needing a heart transplant the cause is lack of exercise and poor diet. I have designed heart pumps in the past and have some working knowledge of medicine and root-cause of specific cardiovascular related illnesses. If people choose a poor lifestyle it is incredibly naive to pay for their medical expenses. Eating fast food every day will tend to lead to heart problems and this is well known.
If you call BS on my experience then here you are::
http://www.purdueexponent.org/features/article_4f4c706d-9220-5475-b97e-bf794d81f364.html
In the end what people think they are getting is health care, but in reality what people are getting is a ponzi scheme that allows wealth to escalate to the top 1%. Have you ever wondered why our country specifically is so messed up with respect to distribution of wealth?? It’s because the wealthiest people out there own the system and will not allow legislation that will decrease their wealth. They are forever seeking a profit and no amount is ever enough.
So what do the rest of us do about all the diseases being spread by those who opted out of the system as willing to die. I.e. those of you with black plague, malaria, flu, meningitis, small pox; and the list goes on. You are not an island. Do you also consent for us to transport you to an uninhabited island and drop you off. Seizing your house of course to pay for the cost of transportation, and leaving your family destitute.
Jan, I am very happy that you brought up this point of disease and pandemic. As for the moving to the island, for the time being I can afford to move my family there myself and in time may have to in order to remain successful and provide the most positive outlook for our lives possible.
This will start off as a reversal of your point as to show you the true nature of the words which you speak. I am no island to myself and no man is an island to himself. This is well know among principled individuals. I will now suggest though that you are the one that wishes to live on an island.
Disease has evolved for millions of years alongside human beings and has serve our species quite nicely. With disease and long periods of time comes an improvement of the overall physique and mental capacity of our species. Disease provides a fundamental mechanism by which Natural Selection can act and thank goodness that is the case or else we may well still be living in caves without ability to rise about the elements. Statistically speaking disease occurs when people are not aware of their environment or are otherwise not intelligent enough to pull themselves out of adverse conditions in which disease is bred.
It is our capacity to use our minds by which we elevate ourselves out of the all-likelihood of disease and death to the low-likelihood of disease and death. To provide medicine to all would go against the primary function of the mind. Just like in the wild, in capitalism we must each fight and work arduously to become successful in order to increase our likelihood of long term genetic success. I work my ass off and avoid watching TV for a reason. I worked incredibly hard to grow up and be able to live somewhere that is not a mobile home where I grew up for a reason. I ride my bike over 10 miles to work each day for a reason. I push myself to the brink of death for a reason and it is because in these cases I risk some part of myself. Without TV I risk not being able to really communicate with ordinary people that have a favorite show for every night of the week. The risk in this case is justified as I am happier for being independent and overjoyed when someone of my nature happens to come in to my life. The risk of taking out $75k in student loans to go to a couple of the best schools on the planet is justified because know as an engineer, physicist, mathematician, and philosopher I am able to interact with my environment in a way that most could not and to a lesser extent because I make such a high salary as a 28 year old. I live quite comfortably today and I choose to use any and all of my time to give back to the community. As stated elsewhere I really love to tutor mathematics (pro bono) of any form whether it be first learning to add and subtract, to algebra and differential equations of multivariables. I assure you that this symbology coming from the love of math permeates through all of life and allows the individual to look at a system of cause and effect and to discern the direction of change of the system for changes in each variable that is part of the system. This all makes the risk of spending so much on education null. It is calculation by which I am able to become better with each passing day. There is great risk in riding my bike to and from work as I live in a populated area north of Detroit and I know that I would be far safer in a car, but I take the risk and the burden of possible failure as a challenge of my mind. If I am not continually aware of my surrounding then I would not be able to survive very long. Each and every day I come in confrontation with a car from by bike. I have to act in an instant and if I choose incorrect I could easily die. I do not curse people driving while on their cell phones, but take their general ignorance and unawareness as a challenge to my mental faculty. My health has improved considerable since making this risk and I thank the decision every day for I am alive. To live is on thing, but to truly be alive is another. It is true that I have raced cars, wrecked cars, and jumped out of airplanes. It is true that I have risked so much for very little in return, but this is life. This is my only shot to mean something to the world and that is the outlook by which I live.
The words laid out above are necessary for you to read before you ever understand my point that you are the one isolated on an island. That lonely place is possible only because risk is continually chosen against time and time again. You should get out of the house, stop watching TV, go to the internet for information, and choose to life instead of death.
Biologically speaking disease is a great impetus for genetic adaptation for our species. What should we do about all the benefit that those diseases mentioned yield? You do understand that diversity in genetics yields the highest potential for life? Do you think that evolution has provided for the existence of these diseases and you are going to be able to remove them from existence? If you wipe out disease then you will necessarily increase the probability of wiping out the species. Are you so selfish that you must live and be provided for, but the fate of all of our species is subject to extinction? Are you so selfish that you believe your life or any other individual’s life is important enough to bankrupt an entire nation? The result of such would be the potential death of millions. Are you so selfish??? I don’t think so. I believe that you want the best for all people just as I do, but I also believe that the underlying mechanisms of society are not as well understood on your side of the fence. There is no good that will come out of providing lazy people with everything they need or think they need to survive. There is little benefit to a handout whereas adversity and learning to survive under any conditions is all-important.
In the world that you want to live there is no diversity because we are all made the same and all are given to without the necessity to use our minds. This place is quite quite magical, but that can never be a reality. Physics defies such possibility under impossible odds… odds that not even I myself would risk.
Bring on the black plague, malaria, flu, meningitis, small pox because I have always eaten dropped food and exposed my body to adverse conditions as to build its immune-response and my ultimate ability to cope with disease in general. For the longest time I wouldn’t even wash my hands in the restroom… I had a scientific reason and I just kind of went with it ;)
Insurance is a scam and I would advise that you let people like me opt out of it or else pay the costs once I screw up and after reading this long, long message you would think that that is bound to happen… right???
Where’s that clip from “The Princess Bride” when we need it?
I guess I will have to review all my Disqus posts to find the ones where I was “beating at the was drums and cheering on government intervention by force in other countries….”
BTW, that’s not a crotch rocket. It has a Vietnam Veteran sticker on the back, and I was an engineer longer than you have been alive. Despite all that, I still have a civic conscience.
I also have a civic conscious to keep my productive capacity out of the grasp of the military industrial complex which is wildly out of control, in providing mathematics tutoring free of charge to local high schoolers, in working for aerospace companies, innovating where I can, and being as informed as possible.
The universal health care WILL be used to bankrupt the nation. If you support that then you will have to support the fallout that follows. The bubbles cannot keep going and the debt cannot keep rising. The monetary system is a broken paradigm intended to shift the wealth to the top. The very concept of interest at the Federal Reserve is one that is used to maintain and increase debt of the nation. Money is based off of trust and once the debt reaches a critical level investors will be scared off and the trust will dissolve leading to a depression which we have never seen before in history. We are quick to think that this is impossible in the modern age, but I’m afraid that it’s not.
Ever ask yourself what happens at the end line of the single greatest Ponzi Scheme in human history??? Say goodbye to the US dollar as the world reserve currency. China is likely the next in line to inherit it as it is the manufacturing hub of the world. It has also been building the shit out of its banking infrastructure in the last decade since 911.
There is no first-world country with a “pure free-market” health care system, not even close.
There is no form of universal health care that does not require government intervention of some kind.
Countries hailed as being more “economically free” have government interference in their health care industries, many of whom have universal health care, whether it be single payer, a public option, mandates, or government-provided health care for seniors, the poor, the disabled, etc.
Waiving your right to sue to get “guaranteed payouts” is tort reform by another name. Tort reform has not significantly reduced the cost of malpractice insurance in states that it has been tried in. What payout is guaranteed? Who decides if you get paid? Who decides how much? Is it like forced arbitration, which usually fucks the ever-living shit out of the victim? What if the “guaranteed payout” isn’t enough? What recourse does someone have if they waived their right to take someone who hurt them to court?
Letting people buy insurance across state lines pretty much means a race to the bottom where insurance covers the least amount and follows the fewest regulations it has to as it rapes the entire country of their hard earned dollars. Ron Paul is essentially asking for what Delaware has become for the credit card companies, an industry that also make a living off of bilking billions of dollars off of millions of people who don’t know better.
People are pushed into buying bad products because of government intervention and mandate. Dr. Paul is pointing out that this is the reason for high prices and has been going on since the 1940’s. If we are not careful to understand the full history it is easy to fall into the logical trap of believing that more government intervention will help. It will not.
A bureaucracy by definition is an inefficient mass that is charged with reviewing and determining the best actions that should be made, but in lobbyist-wetdream-America we elect complete idiots that will most readily sellout to the corporation paying the highest buck. This means that the bureaucracy is destined to make the worst decisions as opposed to a council that is run by means of the application of the scientific method. If you trust a politician with anything, including universal health care, then you are fooling yourself into believing in a fairy tale.
Credit card companies would have far lower interest rates if the industry was not monopolized by lobbying efforts. The true competitive nature of the free market is being masked by government intervention that the populous is not properly paying attention to because they are more concerned with their TV’s and couch surfing. Giving healthcare to these people will only pull down the most productive in the society without much benefit. Until people realize that their choices affect their lives and health the system will continue its perpetual decline.
There is no single, good, honest reason that the greatest country in the world cannot help protect its own citizens with at least a basic level of affordable healthcare. Only greed and special political interest can stand in the way.
There are a plethora of reasons why this system will not work and the largest reason has to do with rampant self-interest of a publicly traded company. These companies are operated for the express benefit of the shareholder and the customer comes in a distant second in order of importance.
So to try to use publicly traded companies at all will be inefficient to non-functional altogether. The next reason that connects with the first is that these large companies lobby the government to get special conditions and seats within the new law. If lobbying is allowed at all then in time it will destroy economic freedom.
So you are absolutely correct about the special interest and greed, but that is inherent into the system. Trying to start a European style health system in the US is a horrible idea because of so many reasons and another is that the US has a horrible sense of community. My time in European countries has shown that the people their are much more into community than we are here in the US. Without that sense of community, discontent for the government, and willingness to flood the streets in protest the US public is destined to be screwed by corporate interests no matter how the health care law is stated.
Also, the US is NOT the greatest country in the world. It was at once, but not anymore. Today we are still high on a special form of arrogance which hangs from a distant past in which we were the greatest, but that time has come and gone by government and corporate intervention.
Or a desire for people to keep their own money.
People being allowed to keep their own hard earned money? What a concept! God forbid we refuse to let others rob us of our earnings. Oh wait, you’re probably “too smart” to believe in God.
About 150 or so years ago, Abraham Lincoln came to the conclusion that the phrase “the pursuit of happiness” from our Declaration of Independence meant the right of each individual to enjoy the fruits of his labor. This, in turn, led to his conclusion that slavery, which deprived individuals the fruits of their labor, was immoral. Of course, we all know how THAT turned out.
How long before the term “life” from that same phrase is recognized as pertaining to health and health care? Surely in my lifetime, and I’m past 50.
The government should provide the same health care to all citizens that US congressmen and women enjoy now. I’m tired of hearing that the richest country in the history of the world “can’t afford it.”
i love how you think we are the richest country with a 17 trillion dollar debt. did anyone bother to ask how much debt these countries that give out “free” healthcare are in..love it when idiots believe they can get a free ride cuz the gov”t makes an empty promise
” I’m tired of hearing that the richest country in the history of the world “can’t afford it.””
Why should healthcare not be provided to the whole world? We are the richest, are we not? Why are we depriving the rest of the world the benefit of our wealth?
Who are we to determine who gets to live and die with or without healthcare?
But how can we enjoy the fruits of our own labor when those fruits are being taken from us to pay for someone else’s health care? If you and Bill Gates stood in a room together that room would be the “wealthiest room” on the planet. Does that make you entitled to Gates’s money? Just because the citizens of the US collectively have more than other countries’ citizens does entitle each of us to each others’ money. It certainly would be cool if no one had to be poor but that doesn’t make it a right!
Its time for Republicans and Libertarians to stop lying. The free market never has and never will bring affordable quality health care to people who are old or disabled. Nor will it bring quality health care to the poor. Free markets are based on making money. There is no money to be made insuring old sick people, and there sure as heck is no money to be made insuring poor people. In a free market system the insurance companies will insure those who are unlikely to need health care and not insure those who are likely to need health care. They will also try to dump people as soon as they become sick. Prior to Medicare over 50% of senior citizens and an even higher percentage of the disable had no health insurance. These numbers were even higher in the rural states.
Virtually all of the advances we have made in diseases related to aging over the last 40 years have happened because Medicare made it profitable to treat seniors and the disabled. In the US today over 50% of cancer care is paid for by Medicare and Medicaid. As a result our life expectancy has increased dramatically.
Prior to Medicare few would have invested in finding a cure for diseases that mainly impacted people over the age of 65, like Alzheimer’s. To few people could pay.
I agree.
There should be no limit to the expense required to keep someone alive. The right to get life saving medical treatment supersedes all cost.
“Virtually all of the advances we have made in diseases related to aging over the last 40 years have happened because Medicare made it profitable to treat seniors and the disabled.”
That is astounding! Could you share where you found that information? I want to read more about it!
Hello Mr. No Limits,
Do you know what “no limit” implies??? Are you willing the bankrupt an entire nation in order to save one individual’s life?? To say yes is to set the fate of potential millions into starvation in the depression that follows the bankruptcy.
“Virtually all of the advances we have made in diseases related to aging over the last 40 years have happened because Medicare made it profitable to treat seniors and the disabled.”
This is a bold-faced lie. The space race alone led to far more technological advances throughout all of industry than Medicare yet the latter cost far more to maintain.
UPS is cutting 15,000 of 33,000 spouses from their health insurance plans on account of ObamaCare and I have relatives that are in this boat. Since my father-in-law works at a small company he will be forced to take ObamaCare or pay the $500 fee to refuse it. Here is a source of my numbers::
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/ups-takes-spouses-insurance-blames-obamacare-6C10975695
There are no more doctors being added to the system and yet we believe that adding 30-40 million new patients will be no issue. Do you know any doctors??? They work incredible hours already and aren’t able to work more. They literally give everything they have and now we are asking for a step-function increase in their productivity. This is a train wreck in the making.
Instead of listening to a politicians spewing fairy tales try listening to an expert… an actual medical doctor with a working knowledge of how the AHA will affect the nation::
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnO5eQK78aE
“Are you willing the bankrupt an entire nation in order to save one individual’s life?? ”
Yes, yes I am. Saving lives is more important then money, wealth, high standard of living, etc.
I agree that money is not more important than a life, but our current system has major impediments to monetary flow in the fashion that you suggest.
You will end up enslaving entire nation in debt in order to “try to save” one life and the outcome is going to be the starvation of half the population. I understand your general compassion and I support it, but the naivety to believe that the elite who have a mental disease in always seeking out additional wealth will not use this health care law to further drain the populous is epic.
Once we are bankrupt and the US dollar is no longer the world reserve currency it’s value will plummet and the poor will starve. The violence that will rise on this account will then be controlled by the military industrial complex in the form of martial law. At this point your ridiculous opinions will become obviously flawed, but until then you can continue living in a bubble if that is your desire.
The Federal Reserve was founded in 1913 and their 100 year charter is finished in the next year. They will not need to renew the charter as they have done previously in history as China is now set to take the torch and carry on with a new world reserve currency. The US is about done my friend and it is the “useful idiots” created by a dumbed down educational system that will have helped us to the finish the most. Stalin used the term “useful idiots” to refer to the people helping to usher in Socialism under the false belief that it would benefit the people. It did not and as history will show… it didn’t work here either!
R. Paul is an old crank with nothing to offer. i can’t understand how he merits a public platform any more than the homeless guy yelling outside oliver gospel. one paragraph touts the ‘free-market’ approach (healthcare is just like fancy sneakers “don’t want ’em? don’t buy ’em!) and the next paragraph proposes “group insurance” contracts where we “pool resources”. forget how “pooling resources” contradicts the free-market ethos, but why a i going to pool resources with others when i’m healthy?