National Healthcare: A 'Trekie's' Response to the Red Herring of Cost

I was recently sufing the web and came across this blog post by a compassionate Canadian: Marlene's Space: The real cost of Medicare. In it, Marlene laments the plight of the uninsured in America and their countrymen's apparent lack of concern. She recalls a scene of homeless Hawaiian women picking up soda cans who seem to bear the signs of untreated injury; then lodges the following complaint:

"It's hard for me, as a Canadian, to understand why so many Americans don't want everyone to have medical coverage. To me, it's totally illogical." (Actually the question is devoid of logic on so many levels, but that's another debate.)

To her query, a minimally informed American shipmate observes--I presume in perfect Kirk-ese--"Spock! (added for effect...) Spock! They think...the cost... is too high." (translation: "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.") Sadly, our sub-space yankee emissary misfires her phasers in reply. So I, generously, shot the missing logic into Marlene's space (compassionately, set only to stun).

'Marlene, are you suggesting that no one in Canada walks with a limp and the everyone there achieves the fulness of their human potential because of nationalized health care? Fortunately most Americans prize their liberty; both to succeed and to fail. National health care is an abominable infringement on that personal liberty--and on the free enterprise system as a whole--for Americans and Canadians alike. Your American friend is limited in her appreciation of the breadth and depth of the problem.'

'For the realatively few Americans who want health insurance and can't get it (about 12 million is the real number--excluding, in all liklihood, the beachcombers you mention as they are probably covered by Medicaid), nationalized healthcare is the equivalent of swatting a fly with a sledge hammer. Maybe a steam shovel! And there are simply no objective, empirical data to suggest that it (at least as presently proposed) will save one thin dime of cost.'

'Your compassion is noted and laudable. But your conclusion that nationalized healthcare is therefore the only solution, reveals the depth of your indoctrination in the concepts of collectivism. You simply can't imagine any alternative, can you? Personally, I'd rather be hobbling around Hawaii collecting cans than trapped in a mindset that had no room for individual liberty and personal responsibility or the virtues of industry, free enterprise and excellence.'

It's sad that Canadians as well as so many Americans look to the state for largesse before seeing solutions to our healthcare ills (and countless other woes) in unencumbered private ingenuity, industry, and enterprise. And that's rational.

The Dismantling of American Capitalism

As Chrysler and GM dismantle their distributor base in America, and as the federal bureaucracy seize more and more control over U.S. industry by Executive decree, the change promised by Barak Obama sweeps violently across the country. Millions of workers, whose jobs are being cast aside will soon rely on European style socialism for their very sustenance. Will America ever recover?

History suggests we will. The nation has faced economic corrections in the past, and bounced back ostensibly stronger, so she will again, say some pundits. But will she? This time the very playing field has changed. The foundations and pillars of free market capitalism, the force behind America's financial vibrancy and supremecy for two and a half hundred years have been deliberately and conspicuously torn away--over time, yes--but in a torrent over the past 100+ days.

Economic uncertainty has placed capital on the shelf and economic stormclouds of mounting debt and deficits that could take decades to repay--if ever at all--portend stormy economic conditions that may dampen the urge for investment for the forseeable future.

Is an equalization of America's wealth with the rest of the so-called free world the more likely scenario? As 10 to 20% of America's workforce are forced onto the public payroll, we look more and more like the socialist republics of Europe. The fires of the profit motive--dubbed "Wall Street Greed" by jealous, guilt-ridden, and angry liberals--become quenched in a deluge of worthless cash (stimulus) and oppressive taxes that flood the marketplace in tidal waves of inflation, high interest rates, and ever-increasing debt. The ultimate insolvency finally brings the collapse of the dollar and the world looks to a new international currency and political authority to save the day.

But can the day be saved? American economic independence is dead and with it, her sovereignty and her soul. Survival is the new standard of excellence. Government is the new giver as the minions clamor for their "rightful" pieces of the dwindling pie. The new order divides the haves from the have-nots along lines of political allegience and idealogy instead of personal excellence and achievement. Without the economic engine of true free market capitalism, can even this new order be sustained? The cost for housing, healthcare, and bread and circuses is high. Who will pay the taxes on which so many depend when personal profit is no longer the reward of industry? The new serfdom is born.

Irrational? Hardly. History and the laws of economics suggest the end of the road we're now on. But perhaps the American spirit is too strong. Perhaps we can reverse course. For Obama and his ilk, the empty hopes of a lazy and uninformed proletariat looking only for largesse is fuel enough. But for us, "hope" is woefully insufficient. We must read the writing on the wall, break out the erasers and repaint the picture of American independence, rugged individualism, and free market capitalism that the global socialists in Washington have dessimated. And we must do it by the sweat of our brow. Now! Before it's too late.

Post Script: Look at the bright side. The collapse of American consumerism will reduce the global carbon footprint and save the planet from certain destruction due to global warming...er...climate change...cooling...uh...CO2 poisoning...greenhouse gas suffocation...pollution...or whatever.