Health Care?

Free Health Care… who could be against that… On the surface I have to admit it sounds really good. I pay a lot of money every month in health care. Not only do I have a wife and two children but I also train and compete in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (a full contact sport). My wife or kids could get hurt or sick or I could even get hurt in a tournament. It would not be wise for me not to have insurance but every year the costs keep rising and I’m not wealthy. With that said, I do have to ask myself is it really free. At what cost is it not only to my family but to everyone? What about the ethical and legal question, “Can the government force us to buy something?”
First off everyone knows that nothing is truly free. Starting next year and for the next 4 years we will all be paying higher taxes to help pay for this with out any of the benefits. The actual health care plan will not kick in for 4 years! The health care plan will also only be free for those at the very bottom (which in a lot of cases health care is already free). Most everyone will be forced to pay for their own plan and the burden on the wealthy will be increasingly higher to pay for those at the bottom.
Recently Obama appointed Dr. Donald Berwick to administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services. Obama did this by recess appointment so not to have a confirmation hearing. Berwick has a lot of very telling quotes on this issue. Recently when speaking in London he said he was “a romantic about the National Health Service,” and that “any health care funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized and humane must, must, redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate.” He also said, “Excellent health care is by definition redistributional. Britain, you chose well.” You may not have a problem with robbing peter to pay pall but I believe it is a moral question and it is just wrong.
Another major issue I have with government run health care is the rationing. When it is free people use it and often. There is only so much money that can be spent so what does the government do when it can’t afford a procedure? They stop offering it! In many of these countries if they don’t offer it you cannot pay for it out of pocket. This is why many people from Canada, Great Britain and others come to the U.S. every year for medical procedures. Dr. Berwick himself said, “You can say, ‘Well, we shouldn’t even look.’ But that would be irrational. The social budget is limited - we have a limited resource pool. It makes terribly good sense to at least know the price of an added benefit, and at some point we might say nationally, regionally, or locally that we wish we could afford it, but we can’t.” He also said, “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care, the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open. Dr. Berwick often praises Great Britain’s health care system but this is the same system that just last year denied life saving cancer drugs to women with breast cancer.
My brother’s wife is from Quebec. She told me that because going to the doctor is free you need to make an appointment 3 months in advanced. She said most people just go to the hospital whenever they have a problem. She actually told me that if she needed a prescription she would just get an appointment at the hospital because she could get in there in about a month. I know that this is only anecdotal but I must say when my brother was explaining the political parties platforms and mentioned health care she freaked out saying, “Why the in the world would anyone want Canadian style heath care”
Should the government be able to force you to buy something? What if the government not only said that you can only by GM cars but mandated that everyone in the country own one per adult and would pay a fine every month if they did not? You would think this absurd. Last year Obama responded to critics of the healthcare bill that were saying that implementing financial penalties if we do not buy insurance is a tax. Obama said that this is absolutely not a tax. Recently the bill has been challenged in court on the bases that the government cannot force you to by product and penalize you if you don't. Now Obama and his lawyers are arguing that the penalties are a tax and that taxing is in their rights… We will see what the court says...
I do truly feel sorry for anyone that legitimately cannot afford health care. However in most of these cases the government already supplies assistance. Not to mention, that you cannot be denied treatment at a hospital and you only need to pay like $20 a month not to be turned into collections. I am also not talking about people that just chose not to work or not to buy insurance. Even at my school we have people in both these categories, which I think is completely crazy. If you choose not to work so that you can devote all of your time to a contact sport I should not have to pay for your insurance. With that said there are some people that fall into the category where they don’t get assistance but for whatever reason cannot legitimately afford insurance. It would be much cheaper to just pay for these people then implement a government health care system.