I read the following article on the front page of the "Voices" section of yesterday's News-Leader and I wanted to share. I have not added to nor taken away from any of it. Here it is in the exact context in which I found it. It was written by John P. Fitts from Noel, Missouri.
Hardworking John Doe will get stuck with health bill
All of the candidates for president (except one) are touting some kind of taxpayer-funded "universal health care."
What this means is that all these candidates (except one) want to saddle all of us with responsibility for those who have neglected their own responsibility in this matter. I cite the following three examples:
Example Number One:
John doe goes to work after graduation, enlists for a tour of duty in the military, honorably serves and is discharged. He gets himself a job immediately, eventually marries, has children, pays all the required taxes, signs up and pays insurance premiums at his jobs, works himself up the ladder, goes to church and does all the traditional things a good citizen would do.
Example Number Two:
Fred doesn't care to complete school, goes to work intermittently, finally decides to work doing odd jobs for cash (not declaring his income from these proceeds). However, Fred does work at a public job just enough to acquire "earned income" on his tax return. Fred has never paid into any kind of health care insurance.
Example Number Three:
Ernesto was born in a foreign country. He enters the United States illegally, works at jobs that pay him cash without paying any taxes and hasn't any health insurance.
Example Number Four:
Larry graduates high school, studies law under a government grant, takes out student loans. Upon graduation from law school he uses his expertise to file bankruptcy to avoid paying his student loans. He then goes into politics, gets elected to two terms in the House and one term in the United States Senate, therefore being guaranteed health care for life even though he has never toiled or paid into a health care plan.
Question:
Should hard working Example Number One John Doe pay for health care for Examples Two, Three and Four? This is what universal health care entails. Someone has to pay the bills!
This is not an article in which someone can disagree. It is fact, plain and simple. The presidential candidates (except one) would have you believe that the problem with health care and its rising costs is due to those that do not have it. They propose Socialist ideas and claim that we would all benefit. However, the opposite is true. Health care costs continue to rise for three main reasons: First, frivolous lawsuits and legitimate lawsuits with frivolous amounts of money being awarded to the "victims" and victims, respectively, have caused doctor's liability insurance to rise therefore forcing doctors to charge more to their patients. Second, the government is freely printing non-gold backed money saturating the market with more money that devalues the dollar causing inflation and prices of everything to rise including health care. The last reason for these health care cost increases and arguably the largest reason is that 200 million Americans do have insurance and they use it in excess and in total disregard for the effects that it will have on the economy. They don't shop around for the cheaper price like they do everything else that they spend their money on. They don't ask about cost at all, rather they ask whether or not it is covered under their insurance policy. Why should they care? They're not paying for it, right? Or are they? The result is that doctor's offices and hospitals charge what they want, the insurance company pays and then raises its premiums across the board to everyone. Now this example is ironic since the people doing this are generally the same people who are paying these rising insurance premiums. If this disregard is the case with the people paying for it, imagine what it will be like if everyone were just given "universal health insurance" and not paying a dime for it.
Also, I love how this guy left out names in his article. I, on the other hand, would like to point out the nameless exception in which this author refers. Just in case you don't know, Ron Paul is the presidential candidate who is against creating these government-ran, taxpayer-funded programs. The opposition will claim that he doesn't care about the welfare of the people and that is why he doesn't want to help them. They'll mention some sob stories about people dying because of their lack of insurance and how Ron Paul must, in turn, support these "needless" deaths. However, Ron Paul would quite honestly and eloquently explain to you that these programs force the very citizens who are already paying ridiculously high insurance premiums to pay for other people's as well. This would be catastrophic to society and their economic state. Hillary Clinton would say that it would be payed for by cutting this or that and that no one would see such an increase, however history has taught us that more government programs means more taxes to support them. She can cut something and their funding to fund another program, but that solves nothing. America is already in so much debt that it can barely be calculated. And in the words of John P. Fitts, "Someone has to pay the bills." The only solution is to cut these government programs and to not replace them with anything else.
The following is my view only and not necessarily the views of any presidential candidate: Why does anyone think that we have some right to life? The idea of having "rights" has been skewed over the years since the indoctrination of the Constitution. We do have rights. But, those rights do not include having people give you medical care that you cannot compensate for just so that you can force the cost on the rest of the hardworking community. I do believe that everyone has the right to not being killed. I don't believe that anyone has the right to being saved from natural death. That is not a right. It is an option that one can take if they have the means to pay for that option. Of course, you cannot stop programs like Medicaid and Medicare dead in the tracks, because a lot of these people paid into the system to get the benefits that they are receiving now. And, it wouldn't be right to take money from someone under a certain premise and not provide what was agreed upon. However, there are millions absorbing these very benefits that have never paid a dime into the system. These are the ones that make it so those who do pay won't get their share. Obviously, the system is warped and it's not dollar for dollar and therefore needs to be scrapped not added to by creating universal health care.
