News Snipet 'Blog

Ignore Hillary Clinton at your own risk. At campaign stops in Iowa and elsewhere, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for president is telling her audience that "We're going to have universal health care when I'm president - there's no doubt about that. We're going to get it done." She knows she tried it before and failed, but this time she'll be president, not co-president, and "I believe we're in a better position today to do that than we were in '93 and '94. ... It's one of the reasons I'm running for president."

Make it THE reason she's running for president. If she's elected president, HRC has an excellent chance of moving the U.S. closer to European style socialism than any previous president, save FDR and LBJ.

People are fearful of health insurance companies. It's not just poor people, but some wealthier people too. Health insurance companies have been famous for loving you when you're well, and hating you when you're sick. Once you've lost your insurance, for any reason, you can either be "rated up," meaning you have to pay much more because you have high blood pressure or some other common ailment, or you can be labeled "uninsurable."

This week, the state of California accused Blue Cross of violating state law when it canceled individual health insurance coverage after policyholders got pregnant or sick. The state fined Blue Cross $1 million dollars, the equivalent of a parking ticket for you and me, since Blue Cross's parent company, WellPoint Inc., rakes in $57 billion a year in premiums. WellPoint insists it did nothing wrong. Perhaps it didn't, but the practice improves the environment for the adoption of socialized medicine, euphemistically labeled "universal healthcare."

The healthcare payment system in the United States is sick – very sick, but socialized medicine is exactly the wrong cure. It's the equivalent of trying to lose weight by going on a beer and ice cream diet. It doesn't work. Trust me. I've tried it.

As healthcare expert Devon Herrick correctly testified to Congress recently, "a primary reason why health care costs are soaring is that most of the time when people enter the medical marketplace, they are spending someone else's money." I like to call it OPM (other people's money). Because they are spending OPM, they consume more than they would if they were spending their own money, even if they had plenty of their own money to spend. The more we spend on health care, the more we have to pay in health insurance premiums, the higher the premiums go, and the fewer people can afford health insurance.

The key to controlling health care spending, and lowering health insurance premiums so that more people can afford it, is to require everyone to spend their own money first. Every healthcare decision should cost enough to make us think about that decision at least as much as we would whether to purchase a pair of shoes, and if so, which pair.

Universal healthcare, aka socialized medicine, takes us in exactly the opposite direction. The overall cost of healthcare will go up, but Hillary won't care because taxpayers will pay the bill collectively, and the tax system can easily dump most of the bill on those with "the ability to pay." That's the central tenet of Marxism, which is fully engrained in out federal income tax system, and the Marxist politicians among us want it engrained in out healthcare system as well, just like Europe. They don't care that the cost is more, because they plan to shift most or all of the cost to the top half, third, fourth, or 10 percent of the population.

In time – not much time – the system will become so costly that it will be impossible to pay the bill, so the government will do what all other governments have done with their socialized medicine. They will begin rationing healthcare. Rather than having individuals ration their own healthcare, the government will ration it for us. We will have long waits for routine surgical procedures. Some will be unavailable.

It also won't bother Hillary, and others who think like her, that healthcare is being rationed. At least we are all being treated the same. To a Marxist, it's better that everyone suffer than that some suffer more than others based on different levels of personal success.

I doubt that conservatives and Republicans are ready for the 2008 healthcare debate. Hillary's message is simple – "You go to the doctor, and we’ll pay the bill." The conservative rebuttal is not as simple. Voters are rather simple-minded.

The 50% of the people who pay only 4% of federal income taxes would not want that to change. If those same 50% can get the same healthcare as everyone else and pay only 4% of the nation's healthcare bill, do you think they'll take that deal? I do. Hillary does to. She's betting her political future on it. It’s not a sure bet, but I won't bet the house against her.

Hillary in 2008