From time to time there appears in the news media the phrase “slippery slope to socialism”. Usually it is employed by someone who is against a government-run health insurance option. The implication is that a government run health insurance plan would begin the process of turning the U.S. into a socialist country. This argument is absolutely ludicrous.
Most developed nations have government-run or government-controlled health insurance systems. Some have been in place since near the end of World War ll. Yet these countries have not changed their economic systems to socialism.
The slippery slope phrase is employed to scare the public into supporting the status quo, no matter who is suffering from it, and maintaining the obscene profits of the private health insurance and pharmaceutical companies.
Robert C. Talbott
Defiance
Tango,
Read this monster over the weekend. No possible way it gets through as written. You hit the nail on the head. Fraud and tort reform is the answer, not this heap of steaming BS.
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Read the bill, you Socialist windbag:
Government intrusion in every aspect of your life is exactly what the House bill provides:
p 95; Government will pay ACORN and Americorps to sign up individuals. (Do you really want ACORN signing you up, 14 states investigating ACORN for fraud) P 102 those eligible for Medicaid will be automatically enrolled in Government plan period, no choice; P 124 No company can sue the government for Price Fixing, No judicial review is permitted against government monopoly; Government to set wages p 145; ALL employers must offer the government plan and auto enroll employees into it p 126; Employers must pay health care bills of part time employees and their families p 149; Any employer with a payroll of $400K that does not offer the gov plan will be taxed 8% or 32,000.00, employers with 250K payroll 2-6% p 167; any individual with unacceptable insurance (acceptable decided by government) will be taxed 2.5% of their yearly earnings p 170; Officers and employees of Gov Healthcare will have access to all banking and personal records of individuals both participating and non-participating p 203; Doctors no matter what specialty will be paid exactly the same p241; mandatory death counseling by government at the age of 65, the estate planning and guiding you in death, p 425-427; Advance Planning including pre payment of estate taxes and end of life resources which includes an Order for End of Life by the Government and assisted suicide p 429 and 430. Everything from the purchase of power chairs to hospital expansion will be controlled by the Government. Doctors are barred from owning or investing in Health Care companies of any kind; sorry folks, but ANYONE that votes for this should be voted out of office period. Instead of “fixing” what is broken, like FRAUD and tort reform, the government will decide when and how you die…depending on costs. Hospitals and Doctors are penalized if a patient is re-admitted after the first treatment.
Read the bill you moron.
It’s a little different providing the death penalty for someone who BROKE THE LAW and providing money to someone to MURDER AN INNOCENT CHILD.
What kind of upbringing did you receive? I actually feel sorry for you.
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tgs: and will euthanize them if they don’t fit the bill.
LIAR.
Our tax dollars will be going to doctors performing abortions.
Boo Freakin Hoo. You don’t think people object to their tax dollars going to the war in Iraq? You don’t think people object to their tax dollars going to the death penalty?
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In the House ObamaCare bill, there is mandatory coverage for murdering a child. Our tax dollars will be going to doctors performing abortions.
Also, euthanasia is an option for the elderly if they are not “contributing” members of society. So, some bureaucrat is going to determine if your mother/father, grandmother/grandfather, aunt, etc. are “contibuting” members of society (work for ACORN or some other Socialist/thug organization) and will euthanize them if they don’t fit the bill.
As someone said on this site: it’s about control, not compassion.
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~~~ Small Business Owners: HELP!!! ~~~
(LINK)
Business simulations done by the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) and other organizations have projected that 1.6 million jobs could be lost in the next 4 years because of rising health care costs. Out of these 1.6 million jobs lost, small businesses would account for more than 1 million or 66 percent of all jobs lost.
[...]
The average growth of health care premiums for small business owners was between 20-24% in 2008 and that was on top of the more than 15 percent average increases the year before, and the year before that.
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I’m inclined to think $22K is low-balling it. On our present course that’s likely to be $22K for a week’s worth of groceries and probably $50K for whatever it is called in 2019 (healthcare, salt & bones preservation…).
…and a take on CBO’s take on the $s
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/25415.html
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~~~ Cost of Doing Nothing ~~~
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/07/premiums_run_amok.html
Health care costs are expected to grow 71 percent over the next decade, which will in turn drive premium increases for health insurance. Unless we take serious steps now to reform our health care system — in particular to reduce the rate of growth in health care costs — health insurance coverage will slip out of reach for even more individuals than the 52 million Americans who today are uninsured.
This analysis shows that without health reform, average family premiums will grow to more than $22,000 by 2019, up from $13,100 today. In some states with higher-than-average premiums, family premiums will exceed $25,000 in 10 years. Of course, a family’s total health care costs will be even higher once co-payments and other out-of-pocket expenses are calculated into the total.
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Can Hogan get an Amen from you other government worshipers?
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Yappers, you get to keep the plan you have, if you want it!
We don’t have 47 million uninsurd people driving up our costs because they are treated and the care providers not paid, except by raising our prices!
The only ones who lose under the Obama plan are the insurance companies!
Stop being stooges for the health insurance company funded GOP!
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So, debrasgd3, you prefer civil service bureaucrats and corrupt politicians to competing insurance company execs. That is your right. There are millions of taxpaying U.S. citizens who don’t necessarily agree with your conclusions on their personal health care choices and selections. As a matter of fact, even your elected representatives will take a pass when it comes to themselves and their families.
Your rights don’t include forcing others to adhere to your preferences on personal health care sourcing. Even if you had the power of the majority you don’t have the right to make personal decisions for my family. Use government to punish me if I do you harm, but please try to recognize the limits of government when it comes to benign individual freedoms.
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Great Letter Robert!
Obscene profits are the truth. To all who believe that your Insurance Company who dictates what care you receive or NOT, need to read up on Wendell Potter, the ex-CEO of Cigna and what he has to say about the Insurance Industry.
To all the spout that government will control what kind of care you receive, need to ask yourself who decides now?
INSURANCE EXECUTIVES DECIDE THE CARE YOU RECEIVE, NOT THE DOCTORS!
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….”The implication is that a government run health insurance plan would begin the process of turning the U.S. into a socialist country. This argument is absolutely ludicrous.”
Mr. Talbott, on that one point we can agree. The process actually began in 1913 with ratification of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. It was accelerated in 1920 by the Nineteenth Amendment which began the conversion of our electoral process from logic to emotion and esthetics. All of that has been compounded by unchallenged Judicial Branch rejection of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.
There have been very few pauses in the past century of steady centralization of government in Washington with social engineering and behavior controls front and center. Nationalizing health care is just one more link added to the chains of collectivist tyranny that bind each successive generation a little tighter.
Since socialists abhor being called socialists, the term collectivist usually serves as well and avoids the prefab semantics disclaimers from the leftist playbook.
Mr. Talbott, the status quo is a constant march away from liberty and toward statism. Federal control of your health care will not change the direction of that march. It will just increase the speeed a bit.
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Why the distinction between gov run health insurance (wasn’t it ‘healthcare’ a few days ago? Kind of like global warming is now climate change) and socialism? Gov-run stuff (other than armies, courts, police) is socialism.
What are obscene profits?
Stossel – http://www.reason.com/news/show/134987.html
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If the leaders in Germany,France,Great Britain,etc even suggested that they change to our health care system they would laugh them out of the country. We are the only country in the WORLD that has a for profit health care system.
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“…have not changed their economic systems to socialism” is sort of right; they’ve more or less been socialist for the entire last century. There are degrees of socialism, ranging from the USA’s mixed economy (part free, part control) to say 40s Germany (entire control). I say it’s sort of right too that we’re not on some slippery slope to socialism, we’re in an increasingly socialist country. The slippery slope was about 100 years ago.
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This news should be on the front page of the Post-Dispatch–I am about to agree with Iconoclastic Sage. Any serious attempt at health care reform that ignores the hospital system is an exercise in futility. This country has some of the finest physicians and best medical centers in the world, but I don’t need to see a Nobel Prize winner or go to the Mayo Clinic for a tetanus shot. There are a millions of medical personnel qualified to give inoculations, set broken bones, diagnose x-rays, prescribe medication, and treat symptoms, who are prevented from delivering basic medical care because they lack the title “Doctor.” I wonder how many out there go to the hospital to take in all the classy artwork. We are paying for Cadillac treatment when a Subaru would do just as well.
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I would more accurately describe our descent as being on a glazed cliff.
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Robert C. Talbott:
“The slippery slope phrase is employed to scare the public into supporting the status quo, no matter who is suffering from it, and maintaining the obscene profits of the private health insurance and pharmaceutical companies.”
It is also scare mongering to insinuate that anybody that doesn’t agree with every radical fringe, wild eyed nanny state boondoggle is supporting the status quo. We can start reform with hospitals, charging 50 cents (cost plus overhead and profit) instead of $15 for a Tylenol capsule. If true costs were shown with excess beds, minimally used expensive equipment and landscape architect designed parking lots listed as a surcharge instead of amortizing them into every billable item, cost comparisons for service could be available to patients when selecting medical care.
Hospital billing has been using socialized medicine for about a hundred years. That’s a good place to start reform.
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