Health Care

I know others have made this point in some form or another, but I don't mind repeating it here: how often do you hear about Americans having to travel to Canada for health care needs versus how often do you hear about Canadians having to come to America for their health care needs? The key words here are "having to". No doubt that there are plenty of capable Canadians health care providers. I would tend to believe that America offers better care, but that is because I believe America tends to have the best of everything. My understanding though is that Canadians come to the U.S. because they cannot wait the 6 or 12 months for needed or desired procedures. Those 6 or 12 months are the results of the Canadian universal health care system, soon to come to America if Obama gets his way.

Most people seem to believe that we need some kind of health care reform. That's fine. The question is whether the federal government should essentially take the entire program over, dictating guidelines, requirements, and costs. It is laughable whenever a government official (or president) claims that government intervention means lower costs. Since when? Oh sure, every politicians and civil servant comes to their job believing they will be the exception, that they will make things right. It almost never happens. Instead they over regulate and over legislate to the point that everything gets out of control. What drives up health care? Lawyers and lawsuits. Legislators who require insurers to include a long list of covered procedures, all of which is passed on to the us through higher premiums. My guess is that if insurers and doctors were not hand tied by what Congress has legislated over the years, our premiums could be cut by half. Instead Congress finds more things to intangible and muck up the entire system. And now they want to just take it over completely . . all in the name of urgency, lower costs, and reform. Yeah, right.

They tell us that if we don't take care of this right now (never mind what is actually in the legislation . . who has time to read that kind of stuff), then we will pay for it later down the road. Well here is my list of things that if we don't take care of it now, it too will come back to bite us: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, immigration, education, terrorists intent on destroying us, excessive spending by government, a rapid move by those within who wish to see America become socialist. Isn't this enough to keep Washington busy? Have they proved to us that they are capable of reform? So why should we trust them with our health care system. It is just one more thing for them to mess up.