By John Stallings
If a resturant near your home started advertising free food & beverages, what do you suppose would happen? Right. There would immediately be constant lines at that restaurant stretching for blocks.
This would go on for a short time. What do you suppose would happen next? Right again. The restaurant would start rationing their food. They’d have to because of the overwhelming demand. People who weren’t even hungry would nonetheless stand in that line. Obviously now the restaurant would start turning people away. If they persisted in giving away food, they’d have to find outside financial support to help them pay for it.
I could go on with that analogy but I think you see my point.
Let's take a close look at what the Democrat Party has waiting in the wings should they be successful at ramming this socialized health care down our throats. Most of the physicians I've spoken to are opposed to UHC, for one reason because they don't want to become Government employees. They'd also like to keep the medical profession something they even recognize & want to continue to be rewarded both financially & intellectually.
From what I’m able to glean, the road to becoming a physician is one of the most demanding & expensive among all the professions. The cost of eight years of college, then three to six years in residency would leave them about $140,000 in debt. Of course what the medical student looks forward to is the appealing salary they’ll get someday to compensate for all the hard work & money spent. That perk or reality would disappear after the enactment of Universal Health Care.
What would immediately appear however would be a huge new tax burden hung around the necks of already jaded & tapped out American taxpayers.
Doctors who now get frustrated working within the guidelines of Medicaid, Medicare & HMOs, would find ever increasing aggravations with the adoption of universal health care. The way doctors would be paid now; “single payer” would be set by the federal government & would be appreciatively lower than they currently receive. Everything in America that pertains to health care would be paid out of one huge pot, thus the name “single payer.”
Now the doctors would be answerable to a group of politicians & the freedom they had to practice medicine as an art/science, i.e. treat patients as individuals, would leave & have in its place federally mandated guidelines for certain procedures across the board. Now you have a group of highly trained doctors being forced to treat each patient the same even though they might feel certain patients would benefit from an alternative type of treatment. We’re talking about a “one size fits all” approach. But people are different & don’t respond the same to medicines & protocols.
Let’s go back to our restaurant illustration when all those people came looking for that free food, stifling the place. Likewise, under “free-health care” now people would be jamming every medical facility. Because there isn’t a fee, people who before would have thought twice about going to a doctor, now will visit the doctor with minor problems that really don’t require medical attention. So you have people being turned away & you also have longer waiting lists.
Personally I need no further proof of the aforementioned than the experience I’ve had as a minister. From time to time my particular denomination would seek to secure group insurance policies for its constituents but the coverage would generally be discontinued after a few months. Though a letter would be sent to the ministers not to start taking their families to doctors for things that weren’t serious, invariably they’d do it anyway; and this in a church group that believes strongly in divine healing. It’s just human nature.
In 2007, in Canada where they have “free health care” the average wait was 18.3 weeks for surgical treatment. In the U.S the wait is just a couple of weeks. Under universal health care, Doctors will lose the fulfillment of being able to help every sick or injured person & the order of the day would become summarily turning people away due to full schedules.
Many jobs in the U.S would be eliminated by the removal of the current insurance companies. In short, in this writer’s view, “free” universal health care would be a bad deal for all America.
Another downside to “free” health care would be that the government would make decisions for the patient & make rules that the patient must follow. For instance, under this plan, a man could be told to report for a prostate examination at 7: am on Monday morning or risk losing further care. A woman could be told when to report to have a mammogram & if she failed to show, her medical care could be affected.
My wife & I are with an HMO & though we’re happy with the plan, we’re pressured to have more & more tests & take medications we don’t want to take, & won’t. This would be but a small sample of what the face of “free” health care would look like. I realize it sounds harsh to say anything the government runs isn't done very well but I would invited the reader to drive around to the public housing areas or "projects" in their town & look them over. These are government run. Is that the way we want our health care to look ?
There are stories coming out of the UK, who’ve long been on free health care, that smokers are told to quit smoking or surgery will be refused. I’m not a smoker but if a government can make rules against smokers, they can conceivably refuse health care to individuals who don’t eat at least five or six veggies a day or get from 20-40 minutes of aerobic exercise at least three times a week.
“Die in Britain, survive in the U.S” was the cover article of the February 2005 issue of The Spectator, a British magazine in which James Bartholomew details the downside of Britain’s free health care system;
“Among women with breast cancer for example, there’s a 46% chance of dying in Britain vs. a 25% chance in the U.S. Britain has one of the worst survival rates in the advanced world, while Americas has the best.”
He continues, “If you’re a man diagnosed with prostate cancer, you have a 57% chance of it killing you in Britain. In the United States the chance drops to 19%.” Again, reports Bartholomew, “Britain is at the bottom of the class & America is at the top.”
Explains Bartholomew, “This is why those who are rich enough often to go to America, leaving behind even private health care. The reason for that is in America you’re more likely to be treated & further, you’re more likely to get better treatment.”
In America, if you’ve had a heart attack, you are given beta-blockers compared to fewer than one-third in Britain. Similarly, American patients are more likely than British patients to have a heart condition diagnosed with an angiogram, more likely to have an artery widened with angioplasty & more likely to get back on their feet by way of a by-pass.
“In the main, Britain’s universal health care system has evolved into a ramshackle structure where even having a test, beyond an x-ray tends to be a rare extravagant event,” writes Bartholomew. “In Britain 36% of patients have to wait more than four months for non-emergency surgery. In the U.S 5% do. In Britain, 40% of cancer patients do not see a cancer specialist.”
Bartholomew tells about a woman named Peggy, an American radiologist who went to Britain to meet her English boyfriend’s family. While she was there, her boyfriend’s father found blood in his urine & went to a local National Health Service hospital in which no CT scans or cystoscopy tests were done. The patient had asthma & lay in his hospital bed with breathing difficulties but still didn’t see a specialist. He was told it would take six weeks. Short of six weeks he was discharged from the hospital. Back home before his appointment with a consultant he died of an asthma attack.
Bartholomew reports that Peggy was “surprised at how ‘accepting’ her boyfriend’s family was.” “What we saw was an unexpected passivity, a lethal submissiveness to systemic incompetence & tragedy, a reaction that seemed poles apart from how things happen in the U.S.” She didn’t say too much because she didn’t want to come across as a pushy, arrogant American but she was thinking that “in America we’d go nuts if we were told we’d have to wait six weeks to see a specialist. Expectations are so much higher.”
As far as the elderly,[ and some have suggested that in time that age would start at around fifty] they can just forget it if UHC becomes law. Obama himself has said that-" those old people will have to be given pain pills instead of expensive medical procedures."
As a footnote on Canada, the average wait for a simple MRI is three months. In Manitoba the median wait for neurosurgery is 15.2 months. For chemotherapy in Saskatchewan patients can expect to be in line for 10 weeks. At last report 10,000 cancer patients who waited an average of two months for radiation treatment have filed a class action lawsuit against Quebec’s hospitals.
Anyone who has a heart will immediately think as I did; what about all those who can’t afford health care? Let’s take a look at the numbers we’re given.
We hear & read a good bit about the 47 million Americans who don’t have health insurance & anecdotal evidence usually accompanies the figure, dramatizing the tragedy. It’s implied if not bluntly stated that this denotes a scandalous shortcoming of our society, our government & our capitalist way of life. The message is – “these Americans are your friends & neighbors & they don’t have health care.”
But Census data shows that 9.5 million of the uninsured listed themselves as “Not a citizen”: they aren’t Americans. The number of uninsured now drops to 37.1 million, about 12% of the population. The Census data also shows that there are 8.3 million uninsured that make between $50,000 & $74,000 per year & 8.7 million who make more than $75,000 per year. That’s roughly 17 million people who ought to be able to “afford” health insurance. Should we count those who can afford health insurance among the uninsured?
So 37.1 minus 8.7 minus 8.3 now leaves us with roughly 20 million people without health insurance which is approximately 7 % of the population, a far cry from the 16% we’ve been told by the socialized medicine lobby & the compliant media who are obviously too lazy to examine the facts.
The Kaiser Family Foundation which is frequently a source for the mainstream media says that Americans who don’t qualify for existing government programs & who make $50,000 a year total actually no more than 5% of our population. Also the number of uninsured American “floats” & 45% will be uninsured for only approximately four months.
This information begs the question; if all this be so, & universal health care has been an abysmal flop around the world, why would intelligent & conscientious politicians want to try it in the U.S? I won’t presume to have that answer in its entirety, but a couple of answers come to mind. Many politicians feel with a more centralized, omnipotent government things work better. It also militates toward a grand design of getting the people more & more under government control. The proponents of free universal health care feel that it has yet to be done by the right people; i.e. –Them.
When Mr. Obama talks about change, you can be sure what he's always had in mind was some incarnation of universal health care. This, if it happens will be a quantum leap for America toward the abyss of socialism. Mr. Obama seems genial enough but we knew from the get-go--he’s far, far Left.
It’s a well known fact among serious observers that a major reason communism shriveled up & died in Russia is that people quit working. The reason they quit working is hard work only pays off in a free-enterprise system. But as you probably know, in the last few years, they've moved back toward the free-market system. As a matter of fact more millionaires are now being produced in places like Russia, China & India than in America. This sounds hard to believe but motor-car companies like Rolls Royce, Bentley etc. report that the lions share of their sales are coming from what we used to think of as third world nations. Don't take my word on this, Google it!
There’s an ocean of material on the internet about the pros & cons of so-called free universal health care so you need not take my word for anything. But consider this;
In Canada, while thousands of baby-boomers & the elderly wait for knee & hip replacement surgery, a dog can get a joint replacement operation at a veterinary hospital done in a matter of weeks.
But the real danger of adopting a system like the one in Canada & Britain is not just long waits for medical treatment. Americans would pay much higher taxes & lose important liberties while turning over personal, life-and-death decisions to government bureaucrats.
This article doesn’t presume to bore down particularly deep into the universal health care question because I'm obviously not an expert on the subject, but hopefully it will give some food for thought.
The ultimate question is; Does it make sense to destroy, [though imperfect,] the best medical care the world has ever seen because 5 out of 100 don’t have adequate access to it?
Blessings,
John
P.S Please make this a matter of prayer. Do your own research because materials are available to explain what the Obama Bill contains. Also, so as I have done & call your Congressman & The White House & , if you're against UHC, tell them so in a pleasant way.You may also need to write a check to show you're serious.-Jas
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