"Single Payer" is one of the greatest oxymorons in the history of mankind -- right up there with "Military Intelligence" or "Government Benefits". The government provides precisely NOTHING -- they pay for it either with money they take from living people, or debt they accrue against future people.
Thus, the same people that pay for everything else -- those that work, create, invest, succeed; pay for the addition of a PUBLIC system. If you currently live in public housing, use nothing but public transportation and eat via SNAP and foodshelves, you will probably LOVE a public system.
If not, you will no doubt use the public system as much as you use the other public systems -- you will pay for it, but you will not use it. Rather, like many of us with schools, you will get your medical care from a private system with private insurers -- at least when it matters.
The objective of "Single Payer" is to make healthcare unaffordable to more people, thus increasing the number of people dependent on the government and willing to vote for candidates who promise to transfer ever larger amounts of money to the government so it can buy the votes of the folks clamoring for better care. "VA for over half the nation" -- once they are trapped on "The Party's" plantation, they have no choice but to demand ever larger payments for the declining working part of the population and the dwindling future generations -- the offical TP position is that that those brown illegal babies will solve all our problems (eventually).
Public medicine is popular because there are more healthy people than sick people, and because sick people often don't vote -- or not for long at least.
The rather odd thing that the election of Trump and now the failure to repeal BOcare has engendered is the "throw up the hands, declare healthcare a "right" and go ahead with the fiction of "single payer" among a lot of people that really ought to know better.
The fact of the real world is that there are ZERO "rights" to a good that takes effort to create. Air can be free becuase we don't have to work to create it. Water can be almost free -- although even water is increasingly expensive. Even though the tap is "close to free" people increasingly opt for the marketed version in plastic bottles.
Acceptance of its major premise -- that no one be denied health care -- is more widespread than ever. Even House Speaker Paul Ryan avers that "our goal is to give every American access to quality, affordable health care," making universality an essential premise of his own reform. And look at how sensitive and defensive Republicans have been about the possibility of people losing coverage in any Obamacare repeal.
Food, shelter, clothing, bourbon, Packers tickets, cars, healthcare ... NOPE.
Let's take shelter as an example. If there is a "right" to shelter, then let's define it. How about a college dorm room? Double occupancy 224 SQ feet, shared bathroom / showers , cafeteria, pizza night once a week, burger night once a week ... many of us have been there.
The military barrracks would be another -- you just lose the stalls around the shitters, and it is one big room with a bunch of bunks to sleep in. I never served, however I did get to spend some time in them on scouting trips.
The USSR essentially had this -- as did/does the US in major cities. Giant concrete mausaleums with broken windows and a urine / fecal stench in the stairwells that was rumored to be supremely memorable. It may not quite be the third world, but you can smell it from there -- get a little too far off the trail in Mexico and the pungent mix of sewage, diesel, cooking smoke, urine and rotting miscellany gives a hint of "universal humanity".
In public health wards in Europe, the optimum ward size is 6-10 beds, but many are now 18 and over. "Private and semi-private"? That would be in the PRIVATE system!
When we were kids, our parents would admonish us to have some backbone. "If everyone else jumps over a cliff, are you going to as well?" This is often the leading argument for "Universal Health Care" ... everyone else in the western world has it, we should too ...".
Freedom isn't free either -- it takes intelligence, backbone, attention to reality ... and yes, maybe even "arrogance" -- what "right" do we have to be free after all?
NONE! It takes constant vigillance and often violence to maintain it -- and BOistan clearly lacks even the appreciation for the concept!
'via Blog this'
No comments:
Post a Comment