-By Warner Todd Huston
Many left-wingers complain that our healthcare system as it stands leaves out the poor, elderly, and those least able to care for themselves. They say that because of this inequity private medical care should be eliminated and government should take over that role in society. That way, they claim, all will be treated equally and everyone will get the same sort of care. Unfortunately for this left-winger’s utopian fantasy, once government becomes the only doctor in town, the very poor, elderly and indigent about whom the left claims to care so much will end up forsaken by the very system envisioned to save their lives.
Does that seem counter-intuitive to you? Do you believe that those least able to take care of themselves will benefit from a government take over of healthcare in America? If so, you’ve been taken in, you’ve swallowed the left’s fantastic claims hook, line, and sinker and they are playing you for a fool… a fool with pockets to be picked clean and power to be taken away from.
In fact, we are already seeing Democrats and Obamacare advocates warming up the hearse to cart off the dead bodies of the young, indigent and elderly that will pile up as a result of lack of access to heatlhcare forced upon them by Obamacare.
How can I say that? Let’s look at our current system, shall we. Today we have a private system with government as a last resort, a sort of back up plan for those that fall through the cracks. The system now is paid for in a multiplicity of ways. Individual payments, insurance companies, employee benefit plans, even taxes, sources abound for the ways in which American’s medical care is paid. But Medicaid and Medicare, not to mention Social Security, are all there to act as a safety net to catch those falling through the private system.
Whether that safety net is working at optimal or not, the question remains that if everyone is in the same federal medical net, where do the ones that fall outside go? Answer: the morgue.
And this final trip won’t be any accident or one forced by mere happenstance, either. It will be a federally mandated final journey kindly allotted to the indigent, the young and the elderly, all of whom will fall outside the net of those able to be taxed for the benefit of being allowed healthcare. All excluded by government bean counters.
And with all private medical care eliminated there will be no where else to turn for such people.
Sound absurd?
Let’s ask Florida Democrat Senate Candidate Maurice Ferré, shall we? Mr. Ferré is today telling elderly folks who he wants to vote for him that we waste too much money trying to keep them alive in their golden years. He says it’s “absurd” how much we spend on end of life care. Mr. Ferré wants funds for end of life care cut off.
“Now you say, well, that’s a ‘death panel.’ Well, you know what, when you get to be 85 or 90 years old, you’re going to die. And I’m sorry, you call it, Sarah Palin, what you want, but the fact is that it is absurd for us to be spending the types of money we’re spending to extend life three months.”
And Ferré is not an outlier in the Democrat Party. Even President Obama’s own healthcare czar, Donald Berwick, has been quoted as a big proponent of the rationing of government healthcare services taking them away from the sick and elderly in order to save money. “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care,” Berwick told Biotechnology Healthcare, “the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”
But even if we didn’t have such ghoulish Democrats wandering our political and healthcare systems, we’d have those feared government “death panels” forced upon us regardless as government will certainly be forced sooner rather than later to cut skyrocketing costs and to make the final decision of which citizens are worthy of care and which aren’t.
We have but to look at any other country to see governments foolishly entrusted with the lives of their citizen patients and killing them without remorse. Just this month euthanasia nurses in Belgium’s government run healthcare system have been found to have wielded death dealing drugs without the consent of patients and families, killing tax paying citizens without medical need or approval. That is government “care” writ large. Dealing death under color of authority.
At least with the system as it is in America today people have some scattered options with which to successfully obtain health saving care. Once government eliminates private enterprise, we will only have government deciding who will live and who will die. Is it perfect? No. Could it use some common sense reforms? Of course.
Still, here’s the thing, do you want politicians of the party to which you are opposed making the decision of life or death over you and your loved ones? Can you trust a government employee to deal with you without bringing politics into the decision. And, worse, taking man’s nature into account, can we trust ourselves to make a system that won’t act so callously? We likely won’t because that is the sort of capriciousness we will have when we leave medical decisions up to politicians as Obamacare does.
I don’t trust members of the Democrat Party to decide if I should live or die. I don’t even trust them to levy a tax without screwing it up. How could I trust my life to them?
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 200 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDailyReview.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
Huston has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events and is currently the co-host of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Conservatism” heard on BlogTalkRadio. Huston’s work has appeared on Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Neil Bortz, and Michael Savage. He has appeared on the G. Gordon Liddy show, dozens of local shows from coast to coast, and many blogtalk radio shows.
Mr. Huston has appeared on local TV news to discuss his writing, has been a guest of CNN’s blogger lunch, and has appeared on Breitbart TV’s B-Team show.
Warner is also the editor of the Cook County Page for RedCounty.com and has a blog on the Tribune-Owned http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/publius-forum/ChicagoNow.com website. He is a well known writer on Illinois politics.
He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of PubliusForum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
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