Are liberals aware how bad socialized health care is around the world?
Democrats say that we shouldn’t worry about the cost of their bill to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. They say that we will spend less on S-CHIP all year than we spend on Iraq in one month. That’s true, in the short run. But the Iraq War will one day end. A new entitlement won’t. Instead, it will grow and grow. Future fiscal crises are built into the design of S-CHIP. It is funded through cigarette taxes, and will be underfunded to the extent that those taxes succeed in discouraging smoking. But that’s the least of the program’s flaws. Under the Democrats’ bill, states will be able to expand benefits and stick the federal government with two-thirds of the tab. The Medicaid program shows us how these incentives will work. Benefits will expand. When times are good, governors and state legislators will be able to offer voters $3 in services for every $1 in state taxes. When times are bad, the politicians will suddenly discover that they have to cut services by $3 for every $1 in savings. Rich blue states will spend the most, and thus get the most federal dollars. Half of all Medicaid spending goes to nine states. Republican congressmen who voted for the S-CHIP bill are voting to transfer money from red states to blue ones. They’re also voting for high marginal tax rates on the poor. S-CHIP, in combination with other federal programs, creates a poverty trap: Many people will find that, if they get ahead, their benefits will fall and they’ll be left behind where they started. Expanding S-CHIP will get coverage to some children who would not otherwise have had it. Although there is little evidence that this is a cost-effective way to improve children’s health, presumably some of these kids will be able to have better preventive care. Other kids, however, will lose their private insurance and end up with worse coverage. Insurance is unaffordable in some of the states that most want to see S-CHIP expanded. But that’s the result of those states’ own regulations. New Jersey’s insurance prices are higher than Pennsylvania’s not because of act of God, but because of acts of the New Jersey legislature. Congressional Republicans—and especially the Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee—should have tried to reduce the regulatory obstacles to buying affordable health insurance. They should have pushed to let consumers buy insurance from out of state, thus bypassing the types of regulations that New Jersey has enacted. Or they could have forced Democrats to end the tax penalty on individually purchased insurance if they wanted any S-CHIP expansion at all. The leading Republican on the committee, Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, instead capitulated. He said that, while he supports free-market reforms, it is unrealistic to expect this Congress to approve them. It is a pathetic excuse: He should have told his Democratic colleagues that it is unrealistic to expect a Republican president to sign such a liberal bill. President Bush should veto this bill proudly.
Politics - 12 Answers
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1 :
Y/A is too busy vetoing questions like yours because Libs can't handle the truth. PAY YOUR OWN STINKING BILLS, LIBS!
2 :
Einstein is attributed to have said something to the effect that, Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Liberalism is a mental disorder.
3 :
Cut and paste much?
4 :
Socialized medicine is coming down the pipe...get used to it.
5 :
They don't care, it makes them feel good. There is NO doubt that if medicine is socialized in the US quality will suffer......
6 :
Back in 1993, according to an internal White House staff memo, then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s staff saw federal coverage of children as a “precursor� to universal coverage. In a section of the memo titled “Kids First,� Clinton’s staff laid out backup plans in the event the universal coverage idea failed. And one of the key options was creating a state-run health plan for children who didn’t qualify for Medicaid but were uninsured. That idea sounds a lot like the current State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which was eventually created by the Republican Congress in 1997. “Under this approach, health care reform is phased in by population, beginning with children,� the memo says. “Kids First is really a precursor to the new system. It is intended to be freestanding and administratively simple, with states given broad flexibility in its design so that it can be easily folded into existing/future program structures.� The document reported by Politico exposes the true basic intent behind liberal proposals to cover portions of the population with a new Big Government entitlement - to create a precedent for covering the entire population with that entitlement. The first lesson here for conservatives is this - Transparency is Big Government's worst enemy, so making Big Government as transparent as possible in every aspect not essential to national security or law enforcement should be a major priority for conservatives. The second lesson is this: Where you start determines the direction of a compromise, so make the opposition compromise toward your basic principles. The SCHIP program was created in 1997 by the Republican majority in Congress as a compromise with the Clinton administration, which after the collapse of Hillarycare in 93 fell back to seeking incremental implementation of universal coverage. the memo would not have come to light without a lawsuit forcing the disclosure of the Hillary Clinton task force deliberations. It took years to get daylight on this memo, and now we know why her attorneys fought so hard to keep it out of sight. The memo confirms the direction taken by the task force, and the direction Hillary would take if elected. It also shows the duplicity of the approach taken by the task force, and how closely it matches the effort to expand S-CHIP far beyond its original mandate
7 :
You must be a health care executive. Enjoying your bonuses on the backs of sick people?
8 :
Are liberals aware how bad socialized health care is around the world? Of course that is why we advocate AFFORDABLE health care rather than socialized medicine. As for the Schip it is an intrim stop gap measure so kids have SOME health care which is better than the uncaring Republicans want them to have. I would like to see how the Republicans would get quality health care to those kids who don't qualify for medicaid and whose parents can't afford high premiums on private insurance. Unfortuntely while quick to criticize the Democrats the Republicans offer no solution at all. My feeling is don't you dare complain unless you offer something better otherwise it is just whining. Be part of the solution not continue to be part of the problem. Try it for once. You might actually find it rewarding.
9 :
Actually, socialized health care is quite good in some countries. It's terrible in Great Britain and worse in the U.S. Army(!), but great in Sweden and the Netherlands. Contrary to popular thought, Germany does not have socialized health care as much as a system of mandatory insurance. And, the German system is great! There are a lot of good systems and some great systems that probably wouldn't work in the U.S. I think that is the main thing we have to get over is thinking just because something works in Europe or Asia it will work in the United States.
10 :
The best part is they never have a viable plan on how to implement such a program in a country like the USA. All I can say is taxes are already taking a pretty big chunk of my pay check as it is. All of us middle class people would sink down to poverty level.
11 :
Real answer to your question NO after all that cutting and pasting do you even remember what your question was ?
12 :
the worst part is how much we bitch about the government not doing what it is already supposed to do, things like "when are they going to fix that pot hole" how long has the really bad neighborhood in your home town been the bad neighborhood? these are reasons when we don't want to trust our government with health care, 2 years after Katrina we still have people in Louisiana looking for their road home money, that's bad enough, but if it was a liver they were waiting for then they would have died a long time ago don't rely on the government, you will be disappointed if you do
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