Interesting in the news today. After several major corporations, including McDonald's, have issued statements saying that they won't be able to afford to provide their employees with health insurance anymore, the new trend has become going to Washington and requesting an exemption from socialized medicine. I think Mickey Dee's even got one, and the labor unions are exempt, built into the bill, until something like 2018. If I recall correctly.
So on the news tonight this topic was under discussion, and no one made the obvious observation. This was on Fox Evening News, one guy -- can't think of his name (Steve?), but he's conservative and a "regular" -- noted that so far, with these developments, all socialized medicine is achieving is to more tightly link the feds and big business, as big business goes hat-in-hand to DC to beg for favors. And if they're big enough, they get the favors. Of course.
(See, the libertarian argument is to deny the government the power to dole out favors in the first place. But then who could the feds boss around and humiliate? Who would fund their stupid campaigns if they can't wield an ax over somebody's neck?)
Anyway, then Juan Williams said he thought the whole thing was terrible -- insurance companies raising their rates in response to 1.) being compelled to cover people with pre-existing health conditions; 2.) being compelled to cover the 18 - 26 yr-olds, who really are notorious for reckless living, I mean, look at the auto insurance rates for this age group; 3.) not being able to put a ceiling on the total dollar amount of pay-outs insurers have to make to a given insured.
Juan thought raising premium rates was awful! Insurance companies are rich! They're a bunch of greedy Fat Cats who just have no compassion for anyone. They have no respect for human life. Etc.
But you know what? They ain't that rich. It's not like people pay premiums and the insurance companies get to keep the money. Most health insurance companies make a 2.5% to 5% profit. That doesn't give them a lot of room for charity. How can they accept the additional cost burden the feds dump on them without raising rates? Impossible. Insurance companies don't have a printing press in the back room to produce more dollars, like congress does. In fact, congress -- and the feds in general -- seem to have no concept at all of where money actually comes from. Except the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
And just a note on the wonderfulness of parents keeping their kids on their insurance policy to the age of 26. I don't know. I was aware all my life that when I turned 18, I'd either have to pay rent and board to my parents or find another place to live. By the age of 26 I'd been a productive, wage-earning, tax-paying member of society for eight years. I was already voting conservative and concerned about what the likes of Jimmy Carter was doing to the nation. So parents today are just trying to break their 26-year-old kids of thumb-sucking?
No wonder they voted for the Comrade. Bunch of idiots? Or I believe the word is "infantilized." I mean, imagine the horror of having to make your own living. God, what a nightmare! No more Spring Break in Cancun and food fights in the cafeteria? What would they have to live for? Maybe if they hadn't been so coddled, they'd be a little more cautious driving and possibly refrain from "Watch this!" kind of antics. That would help lower the cost of insuring them and make insurance more accessible to them. It's called "taking responsibility for yourself." Apparently an increasingly esoteric notion in the USA.
Anyway, I've long suspected that the whole socialized medicine law was just that -- a SOCIALIZED medicine law. The idea is not to make insurance more accessible or affordable. The idea is to drive insurance companies into bankruptcy so that people like the Comrade, Pazzo Pelosi and the other merry marxists can seize that golden opportunity they created to force what they always wanted -- single-payer, government-funded, shit-quality health care. You know, like the British system.
However, if I know America, what probably will happen is that so many people will manage to wrangle so many exemptions, that a couple years from now, people will be saying, "Hey, whatever happened to socialized medicine? Didn't congress pass a bill about that once?"
We'll all have exemptions. Just because capitalism works a whole lot better and no one will have come up with any kind of way to make socialized medicine work here. And of course, by that time congress will be probably about 80% conservative. Of course, the nation will still be saddled with literally thousands more do-nothing bureaucrats in the 159 new agencies the socialized medicine bill creates. And, of course, no one will want to fire their sorry useless asses and leave them to struggle trying to find a real job. They'll all be in some kinda labor union.
So, just another case of flushing billions of taxpayer dollars down a toilet. All cost, no benefit. Same old same old.
Save the Republic.
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