The Federal Health Care Muggers
Finally, the proposed new mandates on insurers violates their rights by preventing them from offering current individual insurance plans to new customers, even if customers wish to purchase them. Instead, the government will dictate what plans they must offer and at what prices — turning them into little more than heavily-regulated subcontractors for the government, akin to public utilities or the postal service.
The central planning approach to health care is doomed to fail, as it already has in Massachusetts, where insurance costs have risen twice as fast as the national average. The Massachusetts system is kept afloat only through hundreds of millions of dollars in annual federal waivers and subsidies — the taxpayers of the other 49 states.
The next ominous step for Massachusetts is the recent state commission proposal to control costs by paying doctors and hospitals a fixed annual fee for taking care of each patient. If a patient needs more care than his allotment, then the doctor and hospital absorb the cost. If a hospital can skimp on treatments, then it keeps the money saved.
Imagine you got sick but were near the end of your annual allotment. Could you trust your doctor to give you objective advice if he would incur a financial penalty for recommending a more expensive surgery over less-expensive medications? Could you rely on him to act in your best interests?
From this point, it’s a small step to the rationing that patients in Canada and Great Britain routinely endure when they wait months for their government-approved MRI scans or chemotherapy. This is the dead end of all forms of “universal health care.”
Whenever the government attempts to guarantee a service such as health care it must also control it. Under the proposed congressional plan, Washington bureaucrats won’t just take our money in the form of higher taxes — they’ll also take control of our health care.
At least a simple mugger offers you the choice of “your money or your life.” The new health care muggers in Washington will deprive you of both.
I agree with everything you say here, Doctor Hsieh. Nicely done. What I still can’t figure out, though, is why just days prior to this last presidential election, you were still saying you “hoped” Barack Obama would win the presidency — although, come to think of it, I do seem to remember some inane equivocation on you and your wife’s part (via the so-called DIM hypothesis) that socialism is deadmeat, and environmentalism just a passing fad, and so Barack Obama is the better choice. Well, at least you’re getting what you hoped for.
It’s about time people came to !!
I think a great example of an epic failure in American Healthcare is Michael Jackson. The beauty of universal healthcare run by the government is that there wouldn’t be able to be 4 doctors prescribing pills that kill their patients. The fact is all medical information should not be contained in paper alone but files on computers. How many incidents like Jacksons occur in America each year? If a doctor looks in the computer and sees that a patient has a deadly prescription he should speak out and if not he should be charged and lose his license. Inefficiencies, lack of information and greedy doctors cost lives
The Democrat Party is a criminal enterprise.
One of the richest countries in the World and we can’t manage to have a decent health care plan.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Where are our priorities?
What are you going to do do when you become old and poor?
Are healthy children the future of this country?
It is likely that Ted Kennedy had his finger in the pie with the Massachusetts plan too,as he does with the nationalizing of the control of health care. It’s his home state and the Massachusetts plan has his earmarks–higher taxes,more government control,growing bigger and out of control,and not working as promised.
The last thing we need in solving a problem is the two left feet and leftism of Prsident Crisis.
Slowly but surely the Republicans are revealing their true strategy on health care: partisans gamesmanship comes before getting something done. If Republicans believe doing nothing will ingratiate themselves with the American people, they have not learned a single lesson from the last two elections. Their do nothing approach is why health care costs have skyrocketed, and it’s why Republicans are in such a bad place today. This strategy is bad politics, but it is also a deeply troubling way to govern.
Having had experience as a resident / citizen in Britain and Canada prior to emigrating to the USA (and having an ongoing condition) I pray that we will not have a system imposed here which draws all of the worst ideas from them.
My supplemental private insurance as a single male to fill out the gaps in the government health care plan in Ontario, Canada was equal to our payment for a family of four under a brief spell of COBRA.
Never mind antiquated diagnostic systems, waiting lists (ie rationing) and MD’s who have lost the will to work because they are terrorized by the government inspectors.
Nancy Pelosi is still claiming she will make the House vote for the Socialized Health Parasite bill before the August recess. If the Blue Dogs have any real bite, they will vote against this bill & kill it in the House…
Rahm Emanual says House will vote on Health Care bill next week via Hot Air:
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/07/24/rahm-emanuel-says-house-will-vote-on-obamacare-next-week/
Is Nancy Pelosi trying to call the Blue Dog’s bluff? Call your House of Representatives.
A perfect article, whose arguments are perfectly unassailable. Which is why the Progressives here touting their support for socialized medicine don’t address them.
Simple solution: If everybody in Congress, Senate and the WH, along with everyone in state and local governments, and the MSM, college administrators and professors, and left wing bloggers, Soros, Peter Lewis, Buffett, and all the other progressive billionaires and millionaires, Hollyweird, ACLU, SEIU, left wing brain drains like Tides, McArthur, Ford foundations all give up their private insurance coverages for a public one, then I will go along with the health care reform.
But the truth is that none of these bastions of left wing progressivism will because they know it is a boondoggle, waste of money and that the care will be far inferior to what their private insurers provide.
MikeW: Geez, ah, forget it!!
A well-written and persuasive op-ed. We can only hope that enough people understand what a tragedy socialized medicine will be in time to stop it. I echo Sebastian Shaw’s sentiments: call your Representatives and let them know that Pelosi’s plan does not have the support she thinks it does!
The notion, advanced implicitly by Tom Stark, that we wouldn’t be staring down the barrel of a massive government takeover of health care if a Republican were in the White House is frankly bizarre. Republicans have driven significant increases in government control of health care. Remember Bush’s Medicare prescription drug plan, passed by a Republican congress? Remember the Massachusetts plan, one of the models on which Obama’s plan is based, signed into law by then-governor and later Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney?
If a Republican were President, I’d expect two minor differences. The proposed takeover would be slightly less bad, but still horrible — and many Republicans would be supporting it.
U.S. HEALTHCARE: CUT YOUR LIFE SHORT
Obama promised HOPE and CHANGE. The media never asked what frightening changes Obama planned for Americans.
WORLDNETDAILY.COM
July 22, 2009
Obamacare for old folks: Just ‘cut your life short’
Health plan provision demands ‘end-of-life’ counseling
By Bob Unruh
The version of President Obama’s universal health care plan pending in the U.S. House would require “end-of-life” counseling for senior citizens, and the former lieutenant governor for the state of New York is warning people to “protect their parents” from the measure.
At issue is section 1233 of the legislative proposal that deals with a government requirement for an “Advance Care Planning Consultation.”
Betsy McCaughey, the former New York state officer, told former president candidate Fred Thompson during an interview on his radio program the “consultation” is no more or less than an attempt to convince seniors to die.
“One of the most shocking things is page 425, where the Congress would make it mandatory absolutely that every five years people in Medicare have a required counseling session,” she said. “They will tell [them] how to end their life sooner.”
McCaughey also said the Obama administration is suggesting that medical care be withheld from seniors based on the expected years they have left to live.
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.printable&pageId=104719
Obama’s Civilian National Security Force
Obama promised change. The End of America as we know it:
Obama: “We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwaAVJITx1Y
PRAVDA: America’s Descent into Marxism – Brief Video
http://www.solutionsfromscience.com/
Yes! Dr. Hsieh hits the nail right on the head!
To those of you commenters dogging the Democrats, don’t be so sure the Republicans are doing a good job either. Their health care plan ideas have been nothing short of immoral as well. Both parties want fascism, just in different degrees. Any degree of fascism is bad for us all.
“Your money or your life? Socialized health care, quite literally, takes both.
Paul,
Why do you openly lie in your headline?
No one is proposing socialized medicine. No One. For that matter no one is even proposing a single payer.
All that is one the table is a public insurance plan to compete with the private plans.
Are you proud of openly publishing lies?
Kelly (#15), the Democrats have the numbers to pass any bill they want in both Houses of Congress (House of Representatives & Senate); therefore, the Democrats are all responsible for this disaster. The 2010 vote where virtually all House members are up for re-election & 60 Senators are up for re-election is making the Democrats nervous with good reason: They cannot credibly claim the Republicans for anything. The blood will be on the Democrats’ hands.
Circulatory disease deaths per 100,000:
# Canada: 219
# United States: 265
Child maltreatment deaths per 100,000:
# Canada: 0.7
# United States: 2.2
Digestive disease deaths per 100,000:
# Canada: 17.4
# United States: 20.5
Infant mortality rate per 1,000 live births
# Canada: 5.08
# United States: 6.3
Intestinal diseases death rate
# Canada: 0.3%
# United States: 7.3%
Proability of not reaching age 60:
# Canada: 9.5%
# United States: 12.8%
jharp: move to canada
jharp: please cite your references. I cannot find these stats.
vivo, what part of “government health care doesn’t work” don’t you understand?
Dr. Hsieh,
Thank you and Great job! Heath care is a critical need but not a right. Who are the right-less creatures we are to enslave in fulfilling this wish?
Those who think that somehow magically that more government intervention into health care would somehow make things more efficient are either mistaken or blatantly dishonest. I would ask them to review the cost effectiveness and efficiency of the government when doing very simple jobs like delivering the mail and project how well controversial or politicized procedures and diagnoses will fare under bureaucratic control.
Those who claim that the government is only trying to compete with private insurance companies are equally mistaken. When there is “free” healthcare which company will continue to offer plans for private healthcare? Especially when their funds are being siphoned off already to pay for the “free” care. Also how exactly does one compete with an agency that sets the rules and is justified in enforcing these rules at gunpoint?
Those who clamor for government intervention in health care and expect it to just work, somehow, are asking for some to become victims to satisfy the needs of others. Saying that the needs of the many are more important than the rights of any who stand in the way. They claim to have compassion for the sick, saying their right to life is more important than the right to property of the insurance companies, doctors and patients that must foot the bill, or else. But the only way for man to exercise his right to life is through the right to his own property at the expense of his own effort and productivity. When you take a man’s property, for any purpose, you are taking his life.
jharp: please cite your references. I cannot find these stats.
Here you go.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_cir_dis_dea-health-circulatory-disease-deaths
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_chi_mal_dea-health-child-maltreatment-deaths
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_dig_dis_dea-health-digestive-disease-deaths
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_inf_mor_rat_tot-health-infant-mortality-rate-total
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_int_dis_dea_rat-health-intestinal-diseases-death-rate
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_pro_of_not_rea_60-health-probability-not-reaching-60
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_res_dis_chi_dea_rat-respiratory-disease-child-death-rate
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_hea_dis_dea-health-heart-disease-deaths
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_hiv_aid_dea_percap-hiv-aids-deaths-per-capita
Thank-you Dr. Hsieh! I wish more doctors had the courage to state what socialized medicine would really mean to both doctors and patients. It is an outrageous violation of individual rights which will ultimately destroy healthcare and many lives. And yes, what we are seeing is an attempt to impose totally government run health care, i.e. socialized medicine. Any so called private option would quickly disappear, being unable to compete with government (tax-payer) subsidized health care.
Any Congressperson who votes for this Unversal Health Care that exempts THEM from participating, includes abortions in it’s policy, and welcomes illegals to the party on my forced tax increases is a governing body of mentally deranged derelicts! I am angry and I want my country back.
20. blotto:
Doesn’t matter. What harpo will never acknowledge is that his statistics are cherrypicked. They won’t take into account:
* How many of the positives result from what Canadians pay out of pocket for services and procedures that aren’t covered.
* Quality of care – Quality of care includes not having to wait long periods in chronic pain for services. The majority here in the US satisfied with their health care through existing insurance get timely diagnostic and palliative care.
* Canada has very different demographics.
* The links harpo will provide will be to government statistics designed to placate the ignorant.
* harpo has historically called every Canadian a liar, both here and on many other sites, who has weighed in that from the citizens point of view, US health care is far superior. In other words, harpo’s opinion of the quality of care a Canadian receives supercedes the opinions of Canadian’s receiving that care.
* harpo is getting more desperate in his lying daily as Obamacare tanks. For example, his continued screech that nationalized common denominator health care, controlled by the government and restricting the citizens ability to seek better care through personal resources, is not socialized health care because it’s not socialized health care. He lies every time he jumps up and down accusing people who realize this liars.
Maryallene Otis:
“And yes, what we are seeing is an attempt to impose totally government run health care, i.e. socialized medicine.”
You go to hell for lying just as well as for stealing.
And your post is an out and out lie.
Commuter:
“nationalized common denominator health care, controlled by the government and restricting the citizens ability to seek better care through personal resources”
What is “nationalized common denominator” health care?
And who is proposing “restricting the citizens ability to seek better care through personal resources”?
Put the crack pipe away. That is utter nonsense.
And did you finally figure out that Obama cut taxes for 95% of us? How’s that make you feel being lied to by El DrugBo, Hannity, and the wingnut gasbags? They made you look like a fool.
Kevin McAllister:
“When you take a man’s property, for any purpose, you are taking his life.”
Where do come up with the craziness? Stunning.
where does the government get the funds to provide ANY health care? It can only get it from citizens.
I encourage you to read: http://bit.ly/PWaEJ
jharp – You are correct. This is not a socialist agenda being proposed for health care; it’s fascist. The distinction is important.
jharp
In regards to property, try reading the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, documents you obviously know little about. The tax break to 95% of Americans you refer to, amounts to about 8$/week and will only be in effect until the end of 2010. That will assuredly be offset by the increase in taxes coming to the people who pay the majority of the taxes as well as the enormous costs companies will pass to all of us, if cap and trade is passed. The fact that non tax payers got tax refunds is criminal. I am one of those below $250,000/yr wage earners who “supposedly” won’t see a tax increase and I think it’s criminal to force successful human beings to pay for society’s problems. Class warfare. Who better than individuals to take responsibility for their own lives. Health care is a service, not a right.
5. vivo: “One of the richest countries in the World and we can’t manage to have a decent health care plan. What’s wrong with this picture? Where are our priorities? What are you going to do do when you become old and poor? Are healthy children the future of this country?”
I have a decent health care plan.
Oh, you mean, why doesn’t the government have a decent health care plan for all of us that we don’t have to earn, that will be provided for us free of charge, magically, by suckers that are willing to work hard for us for little or nothing in return? Hmmm. Let’s think about this …
Sigh. The last administration kept wanting to strip search Grandma. This one wants to kill Grandma.
17. jharp: ““Your money or your life? Socialized health care, quite literally, takes both. Paul, Why do you openly lie in your headline? No one is proposing socialized medicine. No One. For that matter no one is even proposing a single payer. All that is one the table is a public insurance plan to compete with the private plans. Are you proud of openly publishing lies?”
Why don’t you ask yourself the same question?
Everyone knows that the Democratic bill is a Trojan horse for socialized medicine. Quit evading the facts.
“”"”Where do come up with the craziness? Stunning.”"”"”
Uhhh . . . jharp, you are living in a country whose spirit and soul you don’t understand. The quote “When you take a man’s property, for any purpose, you are taking his life,” while I personally don’t know its specific attribution, is a variant on the notion of the right to property and life that is at the basis of why the American colonists rebelled against The Crown.
I know, old stodgy stuff, and waaayyyyy above the heads of people such as yourself, but many of us still take it seriously.
This socialist health care program violates the AMerican citizen’s right to health care. On what moral authority does government have to impede my right to access health care from a provider of my choosing? I currently have a Health Savings Account. If the socialists in Congress have their way, along with the fawning media, this account will be made illegal. It is immoral and unethical to take away the citizen’s desire, and birthright, to master one’s life. As the great Radical Whig Algernon Sidney once said: “Dependency is Slavery.”
Sharon:
“The fact that non tax payers got tax refunds is criminal.”
The fact is no non taxpayers got a refund. Period.
This is a lie spread by El Drug, Hannity, and Fox news.
The truth is 95% of taxpayers had their taxes lowered.
Roderick Reilly:
“Everyone knows that the Democratic bill is a Trojan horse for socialized medicine.”
Every teabagger believes this as it is constantly pimped by Fox and the other wingnut gasbags.
And it is flat out false.
29 of 30 industrialized countries use some form of single payer and one, count them, one has socialized medicine, the U.K.
And the one country without a single payer? Us. And we spend twice as much person on health care as the rest.
For the same level of care.
jharp, I’m not sure whether you’re lying or you really are stupid enough to believe your own rhetoric. Ignoring the fact that people were making money off the tax code, the fact that tobacco taxes went up puts the lie to “95% of Americans got a tax cut.” More than 5% of Americans smoke, and the tax hike more than offsets the so-called tax cut.
‘What is “nationalized common denominator” health care?’
Lowest common denominator health care, tool.
‘And who is proposing “restricting the citizens ability to seek better care through personal resources”?’
Read much, harpo?
‘The truth is 95% of taxpayers had their taxes lowered.’
There you go, lying again, harpo. Your assigning the tax credit to other payroll taxes that tax filers who already pay no or negative taxes is clever, and fits your manipulator’s spin. As has been pointed out to you, we might just as well call it a Pampers credit because the money could be used to cut the non-tax paying filers Pampers bill. In which case it’s nothing more than income redistribution.
All of which is moot, because enough taxes have or will be rising to make the income tax credit disappear.
Sharper tools please.
BTW harpo, your plan for socialized medicine is dying. Support is dropping off every time Obama opens his mouth.
Jharp, comment 17: Socialization means taking or removing legitimate prerogatives from the individual for the (alleged) benefit of the group or society. Almost every instance of government interference in the economy is done for the “public benefit” at the expense of individuals, and is thus properly characterized as socialization. Today’s proposed health care reforms are clearly examples of this and so Dr. Hsieh is perfectly right to denounce them as socialized medicine.
But Dr. Hsieh doesn’t stop with his proper characterization of the plan. He identifies the moral/political concept of individual rights as being the principle which protects individuals from being sacrificed to the group. And then he shows in how many ways the proposals would allow the government to use its force to violate these individual rights (e.g. of doctors, patients, insurers and tax-payers) to the detriment of all. Indeed, the editorial is remarkable for its well-supported criticism of socialized medicine, not for any flaws in reasoning or terminology.
Thank you Dr. Hsieh for getting this message out!
Dead on the money, Dr. Hsieh.
To those who have made allusions to the issue here; when Republicans ran both Congress and the White House, we saw massive expansion of government power, including health care expansion, while stating that they supported a free market. Many of the people I speak to still believe that our current situation is a failure of free markets.
At least with Democrats in charge, no one can claim it was the fault of free markets when the inevitable failure comes.
40. jharp: “Roderick Reilly: “Everyone knows that the Democratic bill is a Trojan horse for socialized medicine.” Every teabagger believes this as it is constantly pimped by Fox and the other wingnut gasbags. And it is flat out false. 29 of 30 industrialized countries use some form of single payer and one, count them, one has socialized medicine, the U.K.”
First of all, that was my comment. Second, the proper name of “single payer” is socialized medicine. You’re just splitting hairs to avoid the central issue.
40. jharp: “And the one country without a single payer? Us. And we spend twice as much person on health care as the rest. For the same level of care.”
That’s false. We actually have better care despite the fact that we have a mixed system: 50% socialized versus 50% highly regulated-market. Just imagine how much better we could do if we were totally free!
The U.S. health care system already takes our money and our lives. We have the highest rate of per-capita health care spending, and the highest rate of amenable mortality (deaths that could be prevented with appropriate medical care) in the industrialized world. We lose 70,000 lives a year that would be saved if our health care system was as good as what they have in France — where they spend about 65% of what we spend. [For the reference, Google "Measuring the Health of Nations".]
Vague talk about individual rights doesn’t help anyone. In France they have their money, their lives, and their freedom (to choose doctors, pay for treatments not covered by insurance, purchase supplemental insurance, etc.) too. Is it too much to hope for the same here?
myth buster:
“Ignoring the fact that people were making money off the tax code”
What you are trying to get across here I have no idea. Quit hitting the bong before you post.
myth buster:
“the fact that tobacco taxes went up puts the lie to “95% of Americans got a tax cut.” More than 5% of Americans smoke, and the tax hike more than offsets the so-called tax cut.”
Are you and Commuter sleeping together. He used the same preposterous claim the other day.
Do the math. 60 cents a pack divided by $400 (Obamas tax cut) equals 666 packs of cigarettes. About 13 packs a week or 2 a day.
I often wonder where our country is headed with thinkers like you two
39. jharp:
Sharon:
“The fact that non tax payers got tax refunds is criminal.”
The fact is no non taxpayers got a refund. Period.
This is a lie spread by El Drug, Hannity, and Fox news.
The truth is 95% of taxpayers had their taxes lowered.
Jul 24, 2009 – 2:18 pm
I didn’t pay federal income tax last year and I got a refund – more than a refund in fact. All of my witholding plus about 2X that in refundable tax credits. I could show you my tax return. So who is the liar, again?
And the “lower taxes” were merely a manipulation of the withholding tables – it’s not lower taxes at all, and your refund in April will be smaller. And the federal government DID raise taxes in other ways, including the cigarette tax mentioned above – which is REGRESSIVE in effect, as it’s borne more by people in the middle-class and lower. So he DID raise taxes on the middle class.
So your flat, simple declarations (without a shred of evidence to back them up, I might add) amount to…nothing much at all. But go ahead, keep repeating them and show the rest of us just how spare your intellectual cupboard actually is.
To make a distinction for Sharon, yes, non-taxpayers get refunds all the time – they have to get their withholding back! But I understand the point you make – no one should get a refund larger than their withholding. I agree, even as I take advantage of it.
myth buster:
harpo is on a lying binge again.
Try this instead:
An individual tax filer whose income is below the level where he pays any income taxes smokes a pack a day. About $218 extra a year with Obama’s tax hike. A second person in the household smokesabout the same. Net loss to Obama’s tax hike versus the income tax credit – the household pays $36 more in taxes due to Obama’s tax policies a year.
This was given as an example to harpo on another thread. In his usual way, he twisted it to try to maintain his tax cut on 95% yada yada lie.
Here’s another one. One smoker smokes a pack a day, is an individual filer falling in the middle of the sliding scale Obama income tax credit. Net loss to Obama’s tax policies is $18.
If Obama gets the Cap and Trade through, anyone who drives, uses electricity, or wants to stay warm in the winter ends up hundreds on the wrong side of Obama’s tax credit.
If Obama passes his health care war on the middle class etc.
You have to make allowances for how abysmally ignorant harpo is about taxes.
Commuter:
‘And who is proposing “restricting the citizens ability to seek better care through personal resources”?’
Read much, harpo?
Yes, I read a lot. And you are a liar. No one has proposed anything of the sort.
You are slime.
Choice of personal plans will be phased out.
Now I know this doesn’t fit your narrative, and you’ll jump up and down and screech that it doesn’t, won’t, never will, and everyone who has figured this out is a liar. But your expected rant and tantrum doesn’t change what so many immediately realized and have written about here and elsewhere. And that includes major media.
So, no, I don’t think you read much that isn’t published on some progressive clown site, or mass emailed from some progressive manipulator to the tools he controls. The dull ones.
And if you did see it in print, as you have here, why I’ve no doubt you’ll do what children and harpo do when someone confronts them with an uncomfortable truth.
Call them liars.
As you do the post publisher in many threads here and as you did in your first comment in this thread.
Smarter tools please.
How to bring down the OSSR.
In your hearts you know this is the only way.
Dear people, wherever you may be,
I’ve just finished rereading Atlas Shrugged for the third time. The first two times (a long time ago) I applied its lessons to the collapse of the Soviet Bloc. Now Ayn Rand’s work seems more pertinent than ever due the events unfolding in my homeland.
The reason I say my homeland is because I’m an expatriate American English teacher living in South Korea. I’ve been living and working in the ROK for twelve years, but I still send in my absentee ballot for presidential elections every four years.
What I’ve been seeing taking place in the USA since January 20 is making me more upset by the day. The mounting deficits, the growing and dangerous dependence on China (many South Koreans are very jittery about China) to finance those deficits, the talk of instituting new (VAT and a big one at that) taxes to help cover those very same deficits, the bailouts of GM, and particularly Chrysler, the attempt to remove choice and private enterprise from the U.S. health care system, the stimulus that went mostly to government drones rather things that would really stimulate, and above all, the despicable behavior of the mainstream media in covering up Obama’s real Chicago background. I had to go and find the red star at the top of William Ayers website all by myself!
All these things have made me very alarmed concerning the future of my country. So I’ve reached one overriding conclusion: it’s time for Americans to revolt against royal authority for the second time in 234 years.
I say this because I don’t believe the traditional legislative process can stop my country’s slide towards the comfortable euthanasia of West European-style socialism. With the idiocy of Bush to guide them, the Republicans have done a very creditable job of taking Dirty Harry’s 357. and pointing it at least at their feet, if not their heads.
So it’s time to revolt. This will be a difficult idea for many Americans to grasp. After all, we are the product of a culture that has been based on the rule of law from its very beginnings back in medieval England.
What I’m talking about is starving the Government Beast. Come next April 15, 2010 don’t send in your tax forms. Refuse to pay! If you’re a small businessman don’t pay your state (If you live in California, New York, or New Jersey, this applies especially to you) or federal business taxes. Don’t pay your licensing fees! When the Bush tax cuts expire in 2011, don’t file! Simply don’t feed the Beast!
If you’re worried about prosecution, there’s safety in numbers. If ten million Americans refuse to pay, the looters can’t possibly oppress more than a very small number of people. If ten million small business people refuse to knuckle under to the New Jealously Class, then the Beast will be truly crippled and will be forced to beg for mercy. View your refusal to pay blackmail to the looters as a civil rights issue along the lines of what inspired Martin Luther King during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and the early 1960s. IT IS NOT YOUR PATRIOTIC DUTY TO PAY HIGHER TAXES! In fact, it can be considered a form of treason to file on April 15, 2010.
Anyway, this has happened before. What most Americans don’t remember or never learned is that in the run-up to the American Revolution the British backed down twice over the issue of taxes. Parliament repealed both the Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts in the face of fierce colonial protests. Remember, the looters don’t have the mighty Royal Navy behind them, or ranks of hard fighting British Grenadiers, all they have in their favor is the willingness to submit of a people who have been comfortable for far too long.
If you don’t think this is too insane, PASS IT ON!!!
Michael G. Gallagher, Ph.D.
Seoul, Korea
sauruman56@yahoo.com
Commuter:
“restricting the citizens ability to seek better care through personal resources”
“Choice of personal plans will be phased out.”
All right. I’ll bite. You’ve made two claims with absolutely no evidence to back either one of them up. Nothing. Zero. I believe you’ve invented the whole thing.
Prove me wrong. Do you have a link? Or anything to substantiate your claim?
1. Tom Stark
Is Paul Hsieh a disillusioned Obama voter? Do tell. I’ll add him to my collection.
I am in the UK as you may have guessed, and we have had socialised healthcare for decades – it means we can have life-threatening accidents (me, my father) and recover, with our only focus on recovery and not bills: it means our elderly can die from prolonged medical problems with a degree of dignity, and not have to bear bankrupting their survivors, or having “withdrawal of treatment” (aka food and water) and it saves so many of the kinds of lives that US medicine throws away, than I can hope to summarise. And yes, I have a sibling in the US for decades, so I know whereof I speak.
Is our NHS perfect – no, but the one in tens-of-thousands of errors make the media, the millions seens ecah week for free, and helped, and saved, do not. And US healthcare is far from perfect, even at the premium prices charged.
Oh, and we pay LESS taxes – sales taxes by state & county are unknown, you can be dirt-poor and disabled here and still have a decent quality of life, if you’re elderly your children can lose their jobs and you will still get the same treatment some millionaire gets, and as for neonatal treatment, even a poor new-made widow gets the same care for her baby as a rich woman.
You guys really don’t have a clue how badly you missed that boat, of basic – not fancy, not consumer-led – healthcare for all.
(FYI, I lean majorly conservative with my politics, but I also lean towards having the best care for My Country that’s possible, and the NHS is definitively that.)
Thank you ,Dr. Hsieh and PJTV, for this excellent article.
As a Canadian I must say, “Brother, you know it!” See if you can get it published in WSJ.
The Health Care and Cap & Trade bills must both be defeated, somehow.
Gallagher’s idea (ten or 100 million Americans refusing to pay taxes) is a great fantasy to wish for. I doubt it will fly because timidity, fear & acquiescence before authority is fast becoming the new American character, as it has been for centuries among Europeans. I too would be afraid to find myself paying the consequences because I was one of only a very few who refused to pay. Big Brother would skin me alive.
Re: Tom Stark’s early comment —socialism no longer has its facade of being an intellectual force. The supernatural facade is far more convincing, and harder to refute, thanks to the ideas of Plato and Immanuel Kant.
Now, Political Power & Force is all socialists have left (hah, get it?) as a means to succeed. ‘Intellectually’ they are bankrupt. The intellectual basis for their fundamental tenets has been proven wrong, so all they have is doctored facts, dropped contexts, sneers, and smears lies. Obama used the latter three more eloquently than any president in the last 150 years. Americans fell for his rhetoric, but it is a last gasp for socialism. Already, the failure of his ideas, especially economically, is becoming clear to many Americans.
Unfortunately, religious arguments appear to have more moral substance. They will supplant socialist politics with theocratic politics. Americans must wake up to the Individualist ideas of its great Founders, and especially those of Ayn Rand.
In fact, the early Baptists of America fought ANY and all ties between religion and the state. They knew, from experience, that any theocratic government would lead to persecution of one religious group or another, however subtle that persecution may be. They knew no government should intervene in religion.
Furthermore, in her history-making genius, Ayn Rand has shown that a proper secular morality can be grasped and established through Reason. She showed that Ethics is not an ineffable field suited only to faith in a supernatural (or noumenal) World, nor is it some vague consensus of a race or nation. Both approaches produce altruism: wherein the individual gives up his life-values to God or to the Collective.
Rand observed that only America developed a political model respecting the morality of Individualism. She saw that its citizens flourished on that basis, as no citizens had ever flourished before. She went on to show why Individualism is the ONLY morality for a rational being. From the ethics of Individualism it was clear that only Capitalism is the moral political system. Of course, that presumes a court system that convicts those who commit fraud (e.g. Bernie Madoff, Barney Frank, and Alan Greenspan).
America is the most intellectually brilliant nation in history. “It is a republic” respecting Individuals’ Right to Life, Liberty, Property, & the Pursuit of Happiness, “if you can keep it“. (Italics are said to be the words of Benjamin Franklin).
Bravo, Dr. Hsieh. As a Canadian, I can testify first-hand to the real-life dangers of state-run medicine. Knowing that a relatively free system is available to me south of the border when ours fails has been until now a comforting thought. Please, Americans, don’t make the literally fatal mistake we did.
Dreaming of revolution is a great thing, but if we can’t even get ten million people to sign an online petition to keep health care free, what are the chances that we can get ten million people to refuse to file their taxes?
There is a petition online. Granted it’s not perfect. But I would encourage everyone to sign it nonetheless and pass the word.
http://www.freeourhealthcarenow.com/
We need thirty million people (10% of the population) to regularly petition the government for greater freedom in a number of areas. If we could reach that level, I think we’d have a fighting chance of turning things in our direction. In the mean time, we’ll have to keep making the moral arguments in favor of freedom.
#46Charles_UK:
I have been trying to explain our N.H.S here but they don’t want to know.
They are unable to grasp the fact the U.K wants to help our fellow citizen’s when comes to health.
Even rich people,agree that health shouldn’t be based on ability to pay.
Americans seem to hate eachother,it’s like a class war.
I work in the N.H.S and as you say it is not perfect and it has to evolve.
Nobody is calling for the U.S system.
Do posters want us to explain in depth the N.H.S or ask questions to those of us that might know a bit more?
We work in it and use it , there i a huge gap of understanding,it might help.
The problem isn’t ignorance it’s the illusion of knowledge.
Policy reflects society,it’s about our belief system not the scrounger’s
mags:
“Do posters want us to explain in depth the N.H.S or ask questions to those of us that might know a bit more?”
No, they don’t. They would rather throw words like “socialism”, “waiting times”, “government take over”, and Obama’s power grab” other than listen and learn and try to solve the problem.
Around here anything Obama is bad and must be stopped.
Even though he won in a landslide and promised to reform our health care system. And they wonder why they lose elections.
Double my tax bill for worse healthcare? Gimme some of that (NOT)!
#60 Mags, #61 Jharp, #46 Jim: Seems to me we made it clear to the UK about 200 years ago that we didn’t want to do things their way. We are well informed of their health care system and we don’t want it. I’ve worked in the health care system for 31 years and I don’t read of Americans traveling to France for their innovative and excellent health care. People from all over the world travel to the US for treatment. “Vague talk about individual rights” ?? America’s revolution and very foundation is based on the creation of a UNIQUE government existing to guarantee the individual’s life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. The key word is INDIVIDUAL. It is up to the individual to control his destiny, the government to see ONLY that these rights are not infringed upon.(Not to control education, health care, the banks, the housing market, GM, etc, etc ) Please, you are free to live in Canada, France or the UK if you like those systems better. Free market capitalism without regulation is the only way to ensure fair trade of money for services. Massive government regulation since FDR, worsening in the last 20 years, has been the demise of this system and the cause of this economic collapse. Unregulated, costs would be controlled, equitable and affordable. Health care is already government regulated in the systems of Medicare and Medicaid. More regulation of health care will only result in disaster, similar to what has happened in the banking and housing systems.
To Michael Gallagher: I believe you have a great idea, certainly the administration would have to take notice. Craig T Nelson, the actor who played the lead role in the sit com “Coach”, has also gone on record, on television, saying he is planning to withhold his taxes. He resides in California, need I say more?
Why are people who live for themselves, take responsibility for themselves, pay for their own medical care considered immoral, by the proponents of socialized medicine? Why do socialists/fascists think that for me to pay for my own medical care is immoral, but for the government to force someone else to pay for it is the height of morality? Why is using my judgment about my own healthcare, and paying for my decisions immoral; but relying on some government clerk to make decisions about my life is considered not only moral and rational- but desirable!?
Am I living under freedom or tyranny if the government can seize my money and force me, by taxation penalties, to “participate” in government run health care? (Oddly, many of the politicians who want to end freedom of economic choice in medicine see the need for freedom of choice in non-economic areas, such as abortion and end of life. Not being principled men and women, they accept this contradiction of wanting freedom regarding two concretes, but economic freedom in medicine as abhorrent, as perfectly acceptable.)
I am not my fellow citizen’s keeper, nor is my fellow citizen responsible for me. If anyone can’t afford medical care, he or she may ask for help, rely on charity or do without- including me. The number of people who are utterly helpless to support themselves and afford basic health care is miniscule, or we never would’ve made it out of the caves. In the relief efforts for the 2004 Tunisian tsunami, the single largest donor of charity money were PRIVATE donations of the US (including non profit institutions); a larger amount even than the amount donated by the US government. Charity for the truly helpless/down on their luck sick individuals in the US has never been and is not now a problem. But worry about charity being lacking is not what these proposals are about. These proposals to end freedom of choice in medicine are about denying men and women their fundamental right to live free and trade with whom they want, when they want, for medical care; and eventually in every aspect of life. That is called freedom, and there is no political freedom without economic freedom. The Obama plan is about wiping freedom out; by ending economic freedom, political freedom is curtailed. You may retain the right to “vote” for one fascist politician vs. another, but how free are you if you don’t have enough money (or political pull) to get a drug, an operation, a doctor, for yourself or your loved ones? Oh, that’s right those types of things only happen in Cuba or Russia, or somewhere else. There are no principles and reality is negotiable.
As we are forced to forgo our right to trade freely in medicine with the doctors we want, which ultimately is the right to achieve values (pursuit of happiness) and the right to live, advocates for collectivized medicine should stop hiding behind the lie of being concerned about the “poor and the old” and state openly that a safe, cozy, non-bloody (initially) slavery under the yoke of government is preferable to living free, with all the responsibilities living for oneself requires.
Sharon,
Americans are flocking here,
http://www.nuwireinvestor.com/articles/top-5-medical-tourism-destinations-51502.aspx
Yes some may go to the U.S for treatment,but only if they can pay,and not lose their house.
They go for boob jobs mostly. Others go for experimental treatment that isn’t licenced,it some cases the N.H.S re-inburse the costs.
Myself and i am sure others don’t care what health system you have,it’s none of my business.
The mis information of other countries health care is astounding.
Roxanne A, very well said. Because of the unique foresight of our founding fathers and the freedom of the individual in a free market capital society, in less than 300 years America has become the greatest, most revered, powerful and most contributing country/society in the world in such a short amount of time. Why any administration chooses to destroy this foundation of ideas is beyond comprehension.
The biggest problem with nationalized health care in the United States is the effect it will have on health research. We can probably ensure that every American has access to today’s average health care, but the cost will be a tremendous reduction in technological advance.
Technology advances because there’s a market for it. Under nationalized health care, what market will their be for medical advances that increase health care costs? The answer is almost certainly none.
Medical care might get cheaper, but it will definitely not get better. And forget about expensive treatments gradually becoming cheaper and then routine — the expensive treatments won’t exist unless their routine, and they can’t become routine until they exist.
Astounding ignorance.
The posters here obviously haven’t a clue to what socialized medicine is.
Otherwise they wouldn’t post that ObamaCare even remotely resembles it.
Mags:
I didn’t see France listed there in the top 5. I can distinguish misinformation. I am interested in facts. This is an anticipatory article of future profits and it doesn’t distinguish Americans. I am aware of the lower costs in those countries, that some Americans are choosing those options (flocking?????? where are the American numbers?), the joint replacements being done in India and the statistical outcomes of success and infection rates would be vital. More often than not, you get what you pay for. Costs in this country would be lower if the government got out of regulating health care and insurance companies, and addressed tort reform. I believe a patient seeking medical care overseas is not free to sue for malpractice in the way they do here in the US. I see that there are also a lot of “boob jobs” and cosmetic surgery being done as per your examples. Low cost for simple surgery is one thing. As a result of innovation in cardiology in this country, less cardiac bypass surgery will be needed in the future. I work in neurosurgery and oncology. I view CT scans and MRI scans sent to us of supposed total resection of brain tumors from other countries…and I am grateful for our services here in America. Other countries may offer alternative cancer care(Farrah Fawcet comes to mind as well as the young boy with lymphoma that fled briefly to avoid chemotherapy) but proven oncological treatment in the US is second to none. By the way, I feel the government interference in that young boy’s case (threatening to prosecute his mother) was unacceptable, another example of government invading private lives and choices of individuals, primarily driven by fear of costly lawsuits. In Detroit, in just the last 3 weeks, the practice I’m involved in is treating a young patient with a visa (non US citizen) from another country and we’re active through the embassy in getting his family here to assist him during this time. This happens all the time, all over the country. The assertion that people with no insurance do not get treatment in this country is NOT TRUE. We see patients with no insurance weekly for no charge in our clinic to follow up their care in the ER. Payment systems are worked out through the hospitals, physicians and charitable organizations all the time. For Americans, private free market medical and insurance options with tort reform will bring costs down and offer the best options for all.
Many thanks to Dr. Hsieh for this excellent article showing in very succinct terms the specific ways that the Democrats’ health care proposal will violate the rights of individual patients, businesses, and insurers. The case of Massachusetts offers practical lessons we would all do well to keep in mind. But most importantly, Dr. Hsieh explains how establishing a false right, health care, will end up destroying our true rights. Thanks again!
Sharon,
I am not really arsed what healthcare you have.I am objecting to the mis representation of the N.H.S ,of which i have worked for 25 yrs.
You recognise that a safety net for people is important,we just widen that net.
Health care is different that entitlements.It’s more like the emergency services,like fire and police.
They wouldn’t alter their action’s depending on ability to pay.
The U.S spends more money on it’s armed forces then all the western nations put together.
This is so you can be ‘safe’ and nobody has a problem with that.You want to keep Americans safe but not healthy via taxes.
We are not a stupid nation,so why would we widely support the N.H.S. We don’t claim it has no problems .
Congratulations on offering charity .We don’t want our childrens treatment dependent on a good will rich donor.
They are equal and there lives just as important.
Sharing the American pie is the birthright of its people. National health care is a piece of that pie. Its constitutionality is irrelevant. The populations of Western nations like England and France get along just fine without depending upon any document like the US constitution. Their governments just try to do whats right for its people. It is no different in the US, our leaders just want to split the American pie in the most peaceful way. Those that rant for our government to follow the constitution are often Racists. They are only interested in the continuation of white power. But our leaders will continue sharing the American pie because it is the right way to do things. The constitution is a spiritual document written by men that wanted every American to feast on the land and party 24/7. It was their dream.