If you've ever attempted to put on clothing that says "one size fits all" only to look in the mirror and feel like Michael Moore wearing a coat designed for actual humans and not elephants, you've experienced the essence of universal health care. While most people think of universal as meaning everyone gets covered, this is only part of the definition. What they fail to focus on, and why it's such a horrible idea, is that everyone gets covered exactly the same. In other words, "Fat guy in a little coooaaaat."
Fat guys in little coats. Little guys in fat coats. This is what all socialist programs are really about. The typical progressive can't stand the idea that someone might get better health care than somebody else, even if you have worked hard, have access to doctors that have worked hard, and are willing to pay for it. That wouldn't be fair. Only Congress are entitled to such perks. So they come up with a size that fits everyone, except it leaves most of us inadequately covered and exposed to bad policy by bureaucrats.
Since it's not feasible or affordable to raise everyone up to the highest standard of health care (any more than it is for everyone to drive a porsche), progressives install government stooges (President Obama calls them "experts") to set minimum standards, recommend affordable treatments, and reject expensive and/or innovative ones. You know, the ones that might actually save your life. This is the same reason why those that receive universal health care in England and Western Europe are three to four times less likely than Americans to survive certain types of cancer, including breast and prostate cancer. In Britain, for example:
Just 41.4 per cent of men and 51.4 per cent of women found to have cancer survive longer than five years after diagnosis - down on the 42 per cent and 53 per cent figures previously reported. Experts blame NHS waste, drug rationing and a lack of cancer specialists for the shameful showing.
To which you might ask: If you aren't free to choose the treatment that could save your life, are you really free? Ben Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, architects of our Declaration of Independence, would probably wonder the same thing. What did we have a revolution for if we are going to allow the central government to make such life and death decisions? Therein lies the trillion dollar question and the problem with universal health coverage or Obamacare or whatever you want to call it. I'm gonna call it state-controlled health care, because I feel that's the name that best describes it. The state sets the rules and the state controls what care you get and when you get it. And you pay them for this "privilege". Yet the mainstream media wonders why this is a tough sell in America?!
With state-controlled health care, the government looks over your doctor's shoulder and evaluates every decision he or she makes to see if it's in line with their bureaucratic rules and regulations. These have mostly been determined by bean counters for cost-effectiveness, and in fact, even the patient's contribution to society will be evaluated. Let me stress that again. The worthiness of the patient will be questioned and evaluated. How many "quality years" are they likely to gain from an expensive procedure or surgery? If they're over 80 and the medical procedure will only add two or three years to their life, maybe it's better, as President Obama said, to just have them take a pain killer.
For effect, I used to modestly propose that if you really wanted to reduce the carbon footprint that supposedly contributes to global warming, then we could simply eliminate citizens when they reached a certain age, say 75 or 80. Humanely, of course. The net result being this would reduce consumption of products which add to greenhouse gasses while conserving resources that younger generations need. But my Jonathan Swift solution doesn't seem so satirical now. We have a president who wants to determine your treatment based on how much money it saves the government. And if we're to take Obama's Science Czar at his word, eugenics can't be far behind as a possible solution. Hopefully, not the Final Solution.
Rather than providing more opportunities for more people at the starting line, allowing families to pay into tax-free health savings accounts for example, or letting everyone keep more of their hard-earned paychecks, progressives set their bleeding hearts to social engineering, viewing pictures of inequality one snapshot at a time and setting about to even the playing field, never once examining what's on the videotape that allowed some people to get further ahead than others. Hint: it's not dependency on government.
With state-controlled health care, we are giving up our most important right, our right to life (which let's be honest, liberals have always questioned), and allowing the government to choose doctors and treatments for us based on their needs, not ours. Under Obama's reform, you may not get the treatment you need because it's too expensive. Or you might have to wait too long for the treatment, in which time your condition worsens and during which you are unable to work. While the health care itself doesn't technically cost you money, it's easy to argue that you pay a higher price in pain, suffering, and lost wages.
Progressives are quick to state their opposition to the government interfering in the womb, where oddly enough the government would be stepping in to protect life, but they are A-okay with government interference in the I.C.U. And if it's getting too expensive, your condition is improving too slowly, and they need that hospital bed for an ACORN member, it's good night, nurse. Literally.
This is a choice of wealth (for the government, not the individual) before liberty, servitude before freedom. Passing socialized medicine, universal health coverage, Obamacare, whatever you want to call it, is quite frankly a reversal of our Declaration of Independence. This is tyranny hiding behind the stethoscope, supersized government wearing the little white doctor's coat and offering a diagnosis that flies against the Hippocratic Oath. The truth of the matter is state-controlled health care doesn't cure the sick, it condemns the sick.
We're trading the best health care in the world for the government's best attempt to manage it. This is not capitalism or free enterprise. And it sure as hell isn't liberty. This is a blatant power-grab by a far left statist who believes that what belongs to you belongs to everyone, and by everyone he means the federal government.
Ben Franklin once said, "The only things certain in this world are death and taxes." President Obama is not only committed to their certainty, but he is determined to bring them both about sooner.
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