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September 15, 2007
John Stossel Attempts to Warn Us Back From the Brink
As our country stumbles toward the abyss of socialized medicine, John Stossel does his best to save us from our own moonbattery with a few sane observations:
To Michael Moore, the insurance companies are crooks, and we'd be better off in places like Cuba, Canada, France or England — any country that offers socialized medicine. But in countries where health care's free, governments deal with that increased demand for it by limiting what's available. You've heard about the wait lists, but it goes beyond that. A British hospital proposed saving money by not washing bedsheets between patients and just turning the sheets over. Some Brits pull their own teeth; dental tools: pliers and bourbon.
Government rationing health care in Canada is why when Karen Jepp went into labor with her quadruplets last month, she flew to Montana to have the babies. No nearby neonatal unit in Canada had room for her.
And everyone is complaining about the millions of Americans who are uninsured. But is health insurance such a good thing? What if you had grocery insurance? You wouldn't care what things cost. Why buy hamburger? I'll just buy steak. Why use coupons? Why look for sales? I'll just buy — everything. My insurance company's paying. That increases costs, because when bills are paid with "other people's money," costs skyrocket.
The point of insurance should be to cover catastrophes, not to make everything "free."
Future generations, suffering the inevitable deprivations of socialized medicine, will look back in amazement at what we threw away. Unless of course liberals succeed at obliterating history and replacing it with their favorite "narrative" of racist, capitalist, homophobic exploitation. Then the future won't even know that our current society existed.
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How did someone as sane as Stossel get a job at ABC? |
On a tip from Wiggins.
Posted by Van Helsing at September 15, 2007 9:24 AM
Comments
Followed the link to Stossel's article. Interesting and so were the reader's comments that followed (both pro and con). Have worked in the medical field since 1980, so have witnessed some massive abuse both in terms of people who milk the system (usually the unemployed or those who continually make bad choices) or in terms of families prolonging a loved one's suffering into the millions of dollars when in fact that patient should have been allowed to die more peaceably at the get-go.
I've also gone without insurance from time to time both when in college and in the workforce (even recently). Have been lucky in regards to health and am glad to have it since having entered my 40's even though I rarely use it. Insurance is basically designed for catastrophic illness as Stossel pointed out. But stats show that when employers provide insurance, employees are more likely to abuse it vs. when the employee finds their own insurance. This tells us that personal responsibility goes out the door when socialism prevails. A happy medium is one that encourages good lifestyle choices, discourages abuse by penalizing "frequent fliers" in ERs and in those milking the system, while providing for those who suffer chronic catastrophic illness without a patient having to lose their shirt.
For all the problems and complexities of healthcare, I still think we do a decent job. Unfortunately, since many folks still smoke, drink to excess, do drugs, over eat and are sedentary, our problems are only going to worsen and create more hardship for those who suffer illness that wasn't brought on by lifestyle. The single best patriotic duty is to take care of yourself and insist that others also take care of themselves. Blanket "protection" doesn't work with a non-compliant populace that sucks down fried foods, smokes weed/tobacco and moves like a sloth both at work and at home. Some employers are providing incentives for working out etc. and that's a good start.
Posted by: fellowes at September 15, 2007 11:41 AM
