Health Care

[From John] Maybe as a nation, we should step back and philosophically examine what we are talking about when we discuss universal health care or to rephrase government sponsored health care. On one hand, we wish to provide a universal health care program that will provide an adequate form of protection for all. To fulfill that wish a 1000 page plan has been proposed. Within that plan is the acceptance that we cannot afford to provide universal health care therefore we must ration health care. Does this make sense? We give with one hand and take with the other.

To complicate the philosophical view it seems that 80 percent of the population is satisfied with their current coverage. So it is our desire to provide a universal health care system, I emphasize universal. A health care system that will affect 100 % of the population because 20 % need better protection.

Beyond this, we now have two forms of governmental healthcare, Medicare and Medicaid that seem to work fairly well but are going broke; we cannot afford this level of health care so we must examine and propose a more expansive system that we probably cannot pay for.

Prior to the 1930’ health care was the responsibility of the individual, his family and private charities. In a sense, it worked as well as the proposed system. It rationed healthcare. If you could afford it you got it if not you didn’t.

What is the philosophical difference? The difference is that the government has decided, beginning with LBJ, that it is necessary and appropriate to redistribute an ever-growing portion of the national wealth to provide a form of socialized healthcare that is, admittedly at the outset inadequate and too expensive.