Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Six Reasons Government-Run Health Care Is Bad for America, by Guest Blogger Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ)

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Washington politicians are rushing to dramatically change America’s entire health care system in the few weeks remaining between now and Congress’s traditional August recess. They intend to create a vast, new government-run plan for hundreds of millions of Americans. This government takeover of private medicine will have devastating consequences. Here are some of the worst:

1. Your benefits will be taxed. We’ve heard the promise time and again, “Your taxes won’t go up one cent,”…unless you have health insurance. Now, Congressional Democrats are proposing to tax the employer-provided benefits most Americans rely on for their medical care. Health insurance already costs too much. Taxing the health care benefits of hardworking Americans will increase its cost even more and drive additional Americans onto a government health care program.

2. If you like what you have, you will lose it. A new government-run plan will destroy your private health care coverage. While proponents of such a plan claim they will allow people to keep what they have, a government-run program will destroy private care, making it uncompetitive and more and more expensive. Millions of Americans who currently have private insurance will be forced onto a government plan.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a member of the House Democrat leadership, in a moment of unguarded candor, recently acknowledged their goal: “[N]ext to me was a guy from the insurance company who then argued against the public health insurance option saying: it wouldn’t let private insurance compete, that a public option would put the private insurance industry out of business and lead to single-payer … he was right!” [emphasis added].

3. Your care and drugs will be rationed. In every country with government-run health care, government health boards decide who is allowed to have what drugs, procedures, and treatments. For instance, Medicare patients were recently informed they would be denied virtual colonoscopies.

Resources will be stretched thinner than ever before, and patients will be denied care to keep costs down. In anticipation of this, the stimulus package included a $1.1 billion research provision so that, “those items, procedures, and interventions… that are found to be less effective and in some cases, more expensive, will no longer be prescribed” [emphasis added].

4. You will be placed on wait lists. Government care not only means rationing, it means bureaucracy and delays. In Massachusetts, the model state for universal coverage, one clinic has a wait list of at least 1,600 people—about four months—for an initial appointment. As one Canadian judge wrote, “Access to a waiting list is not access to health care.” What good is government coverage if all it gets you is a spot on a waiting list?

5. The quality of your care will plummet. Government insurance comes with strings attached for patients and doctors—and the incentives are all wrong. Already, Medicare rewards doctors for the volume of care provided, not for outcomes. If you get well, the doctor sees you less and his income decreases. This government model gives incentive to cram more patients and appointments into every day because quantity, not quality, are what counts. Just imagine: your doctor’s office or hospital will become more and more like the DMV.

6. You will have less choice and freedom. Government has expanded to an unprecedented size. It has taken over banks and car companies and sunk our nation into unthinkable debt. Every day, we see Washington creeping into our bank accounts, our minivans, and now even our doctors’ offices. Obamacare will mean losing one of our most intimate freedoms—the freedom to choose our medical care.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sir, with all due respect, you are wrong.

Once again the right paint a picture of doom and gloom for our future versus the wonderful "free market" system we have now.

An estimated 80% of Americans are fed up with their health care provider and their extraordinary costs. If our system is so perfect, why do so many people want a change?!

Could it be that in many markets there are no choices? The monopolies that you are protecting would probably lose some profits if the government were to offer a little competition for you dollar? And please note, when I say monopoly I mean, it many states you have ONE option for your health care. Yeah, thats a healthy free market setup....

Also Rep Shadegg, how much money have you received from the health care industry for your vote? Two million dollars or more? I could look it up, but how about you come honest and actually provide full disclosure? No? There is a surprise....

Okay people, why is it when we "liberals" suggest that there has to be something better than a greedy bunch of crooks determining what our health care options are, you call us a bunch of socialists, fascists and communists? We have even provided you with numbers to back up our comments, explaining to you in detail what, and how we are going to do this. We are continually asking you for help in crafting the finest system in the world.

The Republicans on the other hand provided a four page document with nothing of substance and no numbers. They did offer to bribe you all with some more tax breaks....

At what point do you folks get it? The Republicans are rotten to the core, and God forbid you have to fight with an HMO for your life. Nothing like a little brush with death to show you how incredibly corrupt the current system is.

How can you folks continue to support these people is a question I will never ever be able to understand. I understand ideological differences, but this is willful ignorance. How many of you are actually happy with your health care options?

Peace.
Rick Beagle

Anonymous said...

I apologize for the double post, but I wanted to share part of this article from CNN's Republican talking head:

"John F. Kennedy had a tough time with Congress. Kennedy's approval ratings could not have been better, hovering somewhere between 70 to 75 percent for much of his time in the White House (climbing as high as 83 percent). But a conservative coalition of southern Democrats and Republicans allied to defeat most of the president's domestic agenda, including Medicare, income-tax cuts, and civil rights.

President Bill Clinton saw his approval ratings rise to 68 percent at the exact time when congressional Republicans were trying to impeach him in 1998.

Yet in some ways Republicans got the last laugh, because Clinton could barely move anything through the House and Senate in his final years as president. His effort to form a bipartisan alliance with House Speaker Newt Gingrich, recently recounted by the historian Steve Gillon in his book "The Pact," collapsed.

Partisan polarization turned out to be much stronger than popularity. In the House of Representatives, Republican legislators in safe seats were more concerned with pleasing the base of their party than with responding to national public opinion."

The party of NO. Imagine how great we could be if we actually worked together?

Sigh.
Rick Beagle

Lorne said...

Republicans have some picture in mind and democrats have some completely different picture in mind, what more is there to say...

Anonymous said...

Couldn't agree more.

Once again, the right is resorting to scare tactics. if they spent as much time proposing solutions as they do protecting the healthcare monopoly, we might have a system that works for all Americans.

Instead we get words like socialism, radical liberalism and communism thrown around to scare the very people this healthcare legislation would protect. It's shameful.

In the end, what we do for each other says a lot about who we are as a people.

Anonymous said...

to anonymous..sir/misses with all due respect, you are wrong.

it is people like who you are bribing our congressmen to gain their voted for the already passed health care bill. also the fact that states. yes, states within the united states are planning on suing our federal government over this issue doesnt say anything to you then you are just as blind as every other "liberal"..you socialist bastard

Anonymous said...

good job on insulting him for leaving his opinion

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I consider every person should read this.

Anonymous said...

these reasons make lots of sense thanks

Anonymous said...

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