Down with Socialized Medicine;Gummint can't do anythng right

[KeithE]

[Dave Roberts]

You mean that government actually can do something right

[ET]

Long response....gonna break this one into multiple posts.....

Ahhh, so many "arguments" -- so much bad thinking, at least when it comes to the philosophy of limited government and confining it to its proper roles; much less the historical Constitutional intent of differentiating between state/local government responsibilities and those of our modern day Asherah pole -- those white granite buildings D.C. I am not yet sure if this continual misunderstanding of what constitutes the proper role of (particularly) the national government is done willingly, if people just don't care to think and wish to have all their cares put on someone else's shoulders or they are just too plain stupid and can't understand the concept of limited government and why it benefits everyone.

Of course, now you know why things cost a lot to manufacture in this country. Now you know why it's cheaper to make things in other countries and import them in so many cases. Now you know why prescription drugs are so expensive and it takes almost $800 MILLION to $1 BILLION to bring a single, approved drug to market over the course of 7-10 YEARS, with 7 or 8 out of every 10 never making it to market.

As usual, the assumption in the "arguments" above is that all of the "good" that government does is somehow necessary or that alternatives to these government "successes" couldn't possibly be better or arrived at without "gummint" meddling. The interstate highway system is touted as one example of success of government work, yet those same government lovers are now trying to regulate us out of the vehicles we use to travel freely in this country on that system and stuff us all into Priuses or onto mass transit with grand and glorious Utopian visions of light rail and buses and high-speed trains moving us here, there and yon. Ever stop to think that if Eisenhower had not built the highway system, bus lines and passenger railroad might still be around to move folks around the country? Instead of the eco-crowd wringing their hands as we pile into Suburbans and head out on the interstate at 15mpg because it's so easy to get places now, we might be heading to the train station to go to the Grand Canyon or to see family across the state. Would the eco-crowd be lamenting "urban sprawl" if the interstate system wouldn't have made it so convenient and quick to travel from the suburbs or neighboring communities to work in another city?

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[ET]

Anybody see John Stossel's show last week where the state of Louisiana has decided it needs to license and regulate florists??? How wonderfully glorious it that? You wouldn't believe the amount of that the guy from the florist association was shoveling to explain why this was a necessity. "Ensure the quality of the product the consumer was getting" was a biggie. Government there now actually employs people to run around and do things like making sure the flowers are in a cooler at the proper temp and that they have water. Of course, you gotta take a state test to get your license.

, right down to using the height of the furniture involved to differentiate the two. Misrepresent yourself and you are subject to a fine of up to $1000 or up to a year in prison. All for our own protection and benefit, according to its proponents. Of course!

Anybody see the recent USA Today study where CAFE standards were estimated to be responsible for 46,000+ deaths due to smaller and lighter and thus less safe cars? Apparently Congress does not yet possess the power to alter the Laws of Physics. There's also the interesting historical note that after CAFE standards were implemented, gasoline consumption went up. With higher mpg, people could own more cars and drive for less $$$, so the "benefit" of CAFE standards was wiped out and had the opposite effect -- more gasoline consumption, more cars on the road and more wear and tear on roads. Gotta love central planning, don't you know?


I'm not sure I would want to put the Post Office in this list of "successes". How much money do they stand to lose next year? Cutting back on service. Wondrously successful. Probably a harbinger of future Obamacare.

Given the comparisons measuring U.S. public education against those of the rest of the world, it's a bit of a stretch to tout public education as a "government success". Has anybody else noticed that as government gets more involved in education and medical care, those things get more screwed up?

I notice that HMOs are not included on that list. Any Dems want to acknowledge that it was Ted Kennedy who was instrumental in creating that now-reviled concept in American health care? Yet while a creation of government, when problems arose with HMOs, fingers are not pointed at government for the "failure" of that concept nor did people call for them to keep their meddling fingers out of health care, but they called on action to treat the symptom and not the cure.

And why is it that we are still stuck in the "quagmire" of the "War on Poverty"? Forty years of fighting that war and still no signs of victory or no end in sight? When are Dems going to call for an end on that war?

Why is college not "affordable" by now? Thirty plus years of student loans and grants and yet politicians STILL talk about how they've got more ideas or need more money to make college "affordable"?

For 30 years or more I have heard politicians talk about the waste and fraud in Medicare/Medicaid. Why does it STILL occur? Who wouldn't be an ABSOLUTE FOOL to believe that Obama is going to stop it or that politicians aren't playing us for fools to use the "elimination of fraud and abuse" as a cost reduction measure to mask the horrendous cost of Obamacare?

Why are so many in denial about government's role in the current housing/mortgage crisis? Why no finger pointing to politicians who rewrote the lending rules and gave an implied guarantee that if the banks made loans and they went bad, we taxpayers would back those loans? All the finger-pointing at "Wall Street 'greed'", but next to none at government meddling.

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[ET]

[KeithE]

[ET]

[KeithE]

[KeithE]

This shows that for the right wing the who of a proposed change means more than the what.

And this is not an April's fool trick.

[Stephen Fox]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline ... deal/talk/

I would hope that anybody who comments after this will watch the documentary online first

[Jonathan]

[Jim]

In the wake of this government’s recent healthcare legislation turning all healthcare over to government bureaucrats, the British are now in the process of dismantling their system, the system to which Obama and his gang aspire. This is crazy. The British have finally decided that people and their local doctors are better qualified than faceless bureaucrats to make healthcare decisions.

.

[Ed Pettibone]

[ET]

Agreed, Ed P....it's not a "reversal"....only a rearranging of the deck chairs as it were. I think the biggest highlight of the article is the fact that is rarely mentioned by those in support of such systems. The centrally planned health care systems face the same increasing costs as our own system.

The whole question in this debate is this: If you have X amount of dollars to spend on health care (or anything else for that matter), who will most wisely and judiciously spent those dollars -- the actual consumer who reaps the direct benefit to his pocketbook by making the most economical decisions, or a bureaucrat in government OR an insurance company?

This change in the British system won't fix the problem. But someone, somewhere will get some brownie points because they "did something". Politicians excel at rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship and trying to sell their efforts as "success" or "progress".

[Jim]