Problem: Some Americans don’t have healthcare. Healthcare is expensive.
Solution:
Democrats – take over the entire U.S. healthcare system eventually with a public option or single payer system which is known as socialized medicine which promises all citizens healthcare. Since they can’t get the public option system passed now, they settled temporarily for a massive bill that requires all Americans to buy healthcare insurance with penalties for those who don’t buy it and subsidies to help those that can’t afford it.
Republicans – allow the free market to bring down the cost of healthcare by allowing insurance companies to compete across state lines. Allow people and employers to deduct the cost of healthcare from their taxes. Allow people to set up tax-free health saving accounts to pay for their healthcare expenses. Allow people to keep their insurance when they lose their jobs. Set up a government-sponsored pool to help people with pre-existing conditions get insurance. Continue Medicare for seniors and Medicaid for poor people and introduce competition in these to improve costs and service.
Analysis:
In socialized medicine, the government gives everyone healthcare, but it also decides what kind of healthcare. Because healthcare for everyone is incredibly expensive, socialized medicine is rationed. It is common to have long waiting lists (as in Canada and England where people wait 6 to 9 months for a simple MRI) and for people to be denied care. When the government controls your healthcare, you can’t appeal to anyone else, like you can when you have private insurance. The Democrat’s bill that was just passed sets up boards of appointed bureaucrats to decide what is covered and denied by age brackets. Seniors enjoy long active lives mainly due to hip surgeries, knee replacements, and heart surgeries—all things that will be harder for them to get under a government-controlled and rationed system.
Government healthcare is also more expensive and inefficient, because there isn’t any free market competition or profit-motive. Nothing works smoothly when the government controls it. Remember dealing with the DMV to get your license? That’s a perfect example of a government service. Imagine your doctor’s office being like the DMV-long waiting lines and rude and irritating clerks who only look at you as a number.
Doctors and hospitals and drug companies don’t have incentives to do research and provide quality care when they don’t have any reason to do so. Doctors don’t have an incentive to work harder and be better when the government caps their salaries. We have the best medical care in the world, and it is because most of the research into new cures and drugs comes from our free market healthcare system and because doctors have an incentive to provide quality care.
Bottom line: We are at a crossroads in our country. Our country was founded on freedom and liberty. Our Founding Fathers specifically set up a system of government where the Constitution gave the federal government limited powers. The federal government has never before told Americans that they had to buy a commodity. This is a huge threat to our freedom as individuals. We will be forced to buy it in 2014 under this new law. The federal government has also never told a class of citizens how much money they can make. Will it stop with the doctors? Is it the federal government’s right to do that? No!
The Constitution’s Declaration of Independence guarantees us God-given rights to the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. Our Founding Fathers interpreted this to mean that men had rights that could not be taken away by the government because they weren’t given to us by the government. The right to liberty included the right to private property (including your money) and to make your own choices. It wasn’t a right to have your needs provided for by the government, including healthcare—that is socialism and the opposite of our free republic.
We have some important questions to answer for our generation. Our government is incurring massive debt that we will have to work to pay off. That debt will reduce our standard of living. We are also promising massive entitlements to seniors, the poor, and even lower middle class people. Do we want to settle for handouts from the government in exchange for giving up our freedom, prosperity, and the right to pursue our own dreams?
