Everyone Has Healthcare, Not Everyone has Health Insurance

Here are bold, but true statements.

Everyone who wants health care in America can have it!
Not having health insurance does not mean you do not have healthcare!

1) It is federal law that a hospital emergency room cannot turn you away
2) Most illegal aliens get their health care this way-everything from routine to emergency care, and ACLU, La Raza, etc. make damn sure no one asks any questions in the emergency room (lawsuit time if they do)
3) All the homeless can also get health care at emergency rooms. Many, when broke or it's cold/hot outside will call 911 and get a free bed & meal for the night
4) Anyone at the poverty level or below gets free health care from state welfare agencies, sometimes money from the states, but mostly funded by the federal government. For example, in California it's Medi-Cal. Money and programs are also directly available from the federal government
5) Children of families of up to 3 times the poverty rate are covered by SCHIP (up to ~$80,000 for a family of 4 because some other welfare benefits are not counted)
6) Medicare for people who worked and are 65 and over
7) Medicaid for those who didn’t and for disabled
8) If you are over the poverty level, you can afford health insurance if it’s a priority to you, so both health insurance and health care are available IF you choose to have it
9) Veterans get health care
10) Indian Health Service for the tribes
11) Everyone who calls 911 is helped onsite or shipped to a hospital, free if you are of the dependency class, insurance otherwise; no one can be refused
12) Colleges and universities usually have some sort of student health service partly paid by tuition, the rest by taxpayers

In addition to the above list, I am sure most people can think of other direct health care or health care related services. There are private charities (some get public funds directly, all get tax breaks so taxpayers are paying a part in addition to the donors) which also help with health care.

Now as to uninsured statistics, they are very deceiving. The “uninsured” include many people from the above list. If you change jobs and are without health insurance for even one day, you are included for the entire year. And, many who can afford health insurance, especially the young and healthy, take the risk that they won’t need it and spend their money on other things. There is also the liberals’ trick of equating health insurance and “affordable” health insurance. Again, affordability for health care is all about priorities just as are restaurant meals, movies, cars, vacations, tobacco, alcohol, fancy clothes, recreational drugs, “bling-bling”, wide screen TV’s, etc., etc. Depending upon your preferences and wants, some or all of these things are affordable or not.

Who Pays

As with every other social program in America, taxpayers carry most of the load for health care. That one fourth of you out there paying income taxes are paying for your health care and that of up to 3 other people. I say up to 3 other people because some health care is paid for by government borrowing, so it will be your income tax paying children and grandchildren who will pay for any of the 3 other people you don’t pay for already.

The income taxpayers in America are already way, way overburdened and there are limits before things collapse. Socialized health care will bust the backs of taxpayers and bring the entire health care system crashing down. Then, many will learn the true meaning of “affordable”.

We need much less government involvement in healthcare and our long term goals ought to be gradual reductions with an eventual end to federal government involvement.

Why Socialized Health Care Always Fails

On a personal note, I have traveled in many countries with nationalized health care and all are dismal failures with far inferior health services to what we already enjoy. I have personally witnessed the failure of nationalized health care in the Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the UK. I lived in Australia for a while and here is how it “worked” there. Everyone who paid taxes paid dearly for nationalized health care and it was horrible: rationed, long waits, outdated technology, poor doctors, and poor facilities. Those that worked and had to pay taxes for nationalized health care could pay extra for private health insurance. The bright side in all these countries but the UK is that private health insurance and private doctors, nurses, etc. were allowed. In the UK national health care is compulsory and (called public payer in our debates) one cannot have private health insurance or private health care.

Why does government run health care always fail? Like all government services those receiving it somehow think federal money is free. Witness all the pork your local congressional elite bring home. Free federal money for their home state. (Aside: As Chrysler, GM, and many banks found out, federal money is not free).

With “free” federal health care the demand always out paces the supply. People will go get care for free service for things that they would never get if they had to pay for all or part of it. So demand grows. And, now with the government running health care, the bureaucracy, and number of union employees, explode and consume vast amounts of the health care budget. As always in huge government programs, efficiency is much less than provided by the private sector. So exploding demand, exploding overhead, and inefficiency make the taxpayers’ cost skyrocket. Health care continues to gobble up more and more of the federal budget so that other services such as national defense shrink. Still costs rise until a limit is approached. Then, health care rationing kicks in with unbelievable cruel, inexplicable, and horrible schemes. Old people are restricted in what expensive procedures they can receive; people diagnosed with deadly diseases which have high cure rates if treated early may wait months or years until it is too late. Or, the latest life saving technology may be unavailable because of its costs. And of course, medical education, research on new procedures, equipment, and drugs is drastically cut so the long-term prognoses for improving health care are not good. All this results in a “brain drain” of the smartest and most highly qualified doctors to other countries (up until now it was mainly the USA).

We Don’t Need Socialized Health Care-It is a Scam

America has the best health care in the world, it is universally available, and we do not need more government in our health care system—we need much less government in our health care. We need much less government involvement in healthcare and our long term goals ought to be gradual reductions with an eventual end to federal government involvement.

Improvements We Do Need to Slash HealthCare Costs

One of the largest costs in American medicine is called “defensive medicine” or “lawsuit risk management”. This means doctors, hospitals, drug companies, medical equipment companies, and others must set aside huge amounts of money to guard against frivolous and excessive lawsuit awards. These set asides for the bottom feeding lawyers add $billions to $trillions to your health and health insurance costs.

We need tort reforms with limits on attorney’s share from medical related lawsuits. Perhaps 10% or less of the actual damage award and none of the punitive damages would be more than fair and prevent the bottom feeders from seeking such huge jury awards. This should include all class action suits as well.

We need to eliminate overlapping payments and programs and election year handouts. These include the SCHIP program (already covered by Medicaid, Social Security, etc.) and the “Seniors Prescription Drug Plan”.

Finally, Social Security should be means tested so that payments are not made to those above 3 times the poverty level and Medicare should be voluntary—if retired persons can get cheaper and better private insurance they should be allowed to do it.