-By Frank Hyland
The issue everywhere in the media, at the White House, on Capitol Hill, and around your supper table is healthcare, whether Medicaid, Medicare or the aptly labeled Obamacare. The burning part of the issue is whether “they” owe us healthcare; that is, are we “entitled” to it.
If I walk into a store expecting that I can have anything and everything on the shelves without paying for it, I’d be called a shoplifter, a thief. Gasoline pumps across the nation, including the ones you patronize, feature a photo of a State Trooper warning against filling up and driving off without paying. When the Plumber fixes your Bathroom leak and you pay him with a check that bounces, you have committed fraud and theft. In all these cases, you received something of value from a person (the Plumber) or a group of people (the gasoline station) and you took their product without paying for it.
Why in the world, then, would anyone think they can go to any other individual — a Doctor — or a group of people — a clinic or hospital — and believe that they can have their product without paying for it? Doctors, Nurses, and their staffs, in case some don’t realize it, have families, mortgages, car payments, tuition payments, and grocery bills just like everyone else, like all of us.
Why? Because for decades we’ve been told that health care is a “right” to which we are entitled. For many of us, we’ve never heard anything different, therefore it must be true. Our belief is further reinforced by a related, but distinct problem: Third party payers. Healthcare premiums, in many cases, are deducted from our paychecks before we even see the money in our account at the bank or credit union. After a while, decades really, the “cost” seems to disappear, evaporate. If it has never been in our pocket, we believe it hasn’t existed. At that point, the idea that we must “begin” paying for our healthcare “entitlement” enrages us.
Healthcare is only one of the entitlement programs, disguised by third- party payments, which cause us to go into spasms at even the suggestion that we need to begin paying or paying more. The ponzi scheme we call Social Security also will go bankrupt in the coming years. Medicaid, designed for poorer recipients, also is headed over a cliff. Other nations that have offered “free” education through college and beyond, with citizenship as the sole qualification, have experienced student riots. Similar disquieting rumblings have already been heard in the US about tuition increases. As in the aforementioned case of healthcare, educators also have mortgages, car payments, tuition bills of their own, and groceries to buy.
European nations across the continent have been rocked to their foundations after violent, destructive riots in the streets by those who insist that they are “entitled” to money they believe is theirs. Sound like Wisconsin last winter? This raises the question that must not only be answered, but answered in a way that changes fundamentally the way we feel now — Just what is it to which we are entitled? Some will tell you that the list is a lengthy one, including “a living wage,” education, healthcare, Social Security payments, food stamps, a home and more. Others will tell you that the only thing to which we are entitled is “opportunity,” the opportunity to pursue healthcare, a job, food, an education. Don’t agree? Then another question is called for. Where will the money for your entitlements come from? The government? That’s been tried and it’s failing now, has failed in the past over and over. Social Security, alone, will give you an example: When the program began, there were 23 workers to every retiree, a relatively light load on your budget . In a few short years the number of workers supporting each retiree on Social Security will dwindle to two. That’s right — you and your neighbor next door will provide all the retirement income for the retired neighbor across the street. If that sounds doable to you, good luck. You are entitled to my best wishes.
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Frank Hyland is a long-time Writer/Editor who has written for The New Media Alliance, and also for The Reality Check and has appeared weekly on Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Conservatism on Sunday evenings on Blog Talk Radio, along with Babe Huggett and Warner Todd Huston.