A Liberal College Kid Sees Sicko
The title alone says a lot. The author is young, gullible, and has little or no experience making a living in the real world. Fortunately, that may change once he graduates and has to start paying taxes only to find out how incredibly stupidly and inefficiently the government uses the money it took from his paycheck.
Here are a couple points about his article:
1. About the infant mortality rate, it is calculated differently in different countries. In some countries, if a premature baby dies, it isn’t counted where it is in the US. The US also has way too many babies born of drug addicted mothers. That drives up the mortality rate, too.
2. When women have just had a baby the government pays for a nanny to visit four hours a week to help the new mother – I’ve seen similar programs for welfare mothers in states like Oregon.
More to the point, the government isn’t our nanny. It isn’t (or shouldn’t) be a matter of voting for the candidate who offers the most “free stuff” because nothing is free. As others have pointed out, government ran health care very often involves rationing of care. If you think health care is expensive now, just wait until it is “free.”
Having lived government ran health care while in the military, I want no part of having bureaucrats deciding issues about my health. You may argue that insurance companies are just as bad but you’d be mistaken – you can fire an insurance company that gives poor service. Try firing a bureaucrat. It’s damned near impossible.
Finally, there’s nothing “progressive” about letting government bureaucrats take over 1/6th of the US economy. They already spend several hundred billion dollars a year on Medicare and Medicaid (serving less than 20% of the population) and have made a royal mess of it. What makes anyone in their right mind believe they could manage health care for everyone when they’ve proven unable to do it for Medicare? Will forcing everyone under government control suddenly make them competent?
