August 03, 2009 - By True Patriot and
Congressman
Ron
Paul
As the healthcare debate rages on, there is one reality that
even the proponents of this hostile takeover of healthcare
by government cannot ignore – and that is money. The
government simply does not have the money for a new, expansive,
public healthcare plan. The country is in a deep recession
that will deepen even further with the coming collapse of
the commercial real estate market. The last thing we need
is for government to increase and expand taxes to pay for
another damaging, wasteful program. Foreigners are becoming
less enthusiastic about buying our debt, and creating another
open-ended welfare program when we cannot pay for what is
already in place, will not help. Champions of socialized
medicine want to tax the rich, tax businesses that already
cannot afford to provide health plans to employees, and tax
people who don’t want to participate in the government’s
scheme by buying an approved healthcare plan. Presumably,
all these taxes are to induce compliance. This is not freedom,
nor will it improve healthcare.
There are limits to how much government can tax before it
kills the host. Even worse, when government attempts to subsidize
prices, it has the net effect of inflating them instead. The
economic reality is that you cannot distort natural market
pressures without unintended consequences. Market forces would
drive prices down. Government meddling negates these pressures,
adds regulatory compliance costs and layers of bureaucracy,
and in the end, drives prices up.
The non-partisan CBO estimates that the healthcare plan will
cost almost a trillion dollars over the next ten years. But
government crystal balls always massively underestimate costs.
It is not hard to imagine the final cost being two or three
times the estimates, even though the estimates are bad enough.
It is still surreal that in a free country we are talking
only about HOW government should fix healthcare, rather than
WHY government should fix healthcare. This should be between
doctors and patients. But this has been the discussion since
the 60’s and the inception of Medicare and Medicaid,
when government first began intervening to keep costs down
and make sure everyone had access. The result of Medicaid/Medicare
price controls and regulatory burden has been to drive more
doctors out of the system – making it more difficult
for the poor and the elderly to receive quality care! Seemingly,
there are no failed government programs, only underfunded ones.
If we refuse to acknowledge common sense economics, the prescription
will always be the same: more government.
Make no mistake, government control and micromanagement of
healthcare will hurt, not help healthcare in this country.
However, if for a moment, we allowed the assumption that it
really would accomplish all they claim, paying for it would
still plunge the country into poverty. This solves nothing.
The government, like any household struggling with bills to
pay, should prioritize its budget. If the administration is
serious about supporting healthcare without contributing to
our skyrocketing deficits, they should fulfill promises to
reduce our overseas commitments and use some of those savings
to take care of Americans at home instead of killing foreigners
abroad.
The leadership in Washington persists in a fantasy world of
unlimited money to spend on unlimited programs and wars to
garner unlimited control. But there is a fast-approaching limit
to our ability to borrow, steal, and print. Acknowledging this
reality is not mean-spirited or cruel. On the contrary, it
could be the only thing that saves us from complete and total
economic meltdown.
Read more Articles by Ron Paul at http://www.house.gov/paul/legis.shtml
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