Nancy Pelosi attempts to denigrate all those who oppose nationalized healthcare as Nazis:

by Allison Bricker, the Smoking Argus Daily

The “opposition” party in the House, i.e. the Republicans, have unveiled a flow chart illustrating the potential tangled bureaucratic red-tape mess that awaits Americans should President Obama’s plan to nationalize health care become law.

Quite frankly, anyone who supports such a system is nothing less than a thief. A thief too chicken-shit to steal directly from our family so thus they employ government thugs to conduct their thievery and call it “taxation”. Why should our family’s health be secondary to someone who chose to abuse drugs, alcohol, eat low quality fast food, not wear a seat-belt, smoke, ride a motorcycle without a helmet, or any of the utter litany of other personal decisions which have a specific effect on an individual’s health?

Are we supposed to feel guilty for any of the above who chose to make poor decisions related to their own health? Is our family somehow responsible for a complete stranger in some other state, county, town, etcetera who after eating a lifetime of fast food has developed diabetes and also needs Viagra to combat their erectile dysfunction?

Does our own children’s health care take a back seat to a the millions of high risk behavior young adults who end up mangled after some extreme sporting event?

Yet those who seek government health care keep whining, how dare we be so selfish as to desire to ensure the health of our our own family first. According to them we should remain quiet as these irresponsible, dependent, wards of the nanny state force their way into our private bank accounts with the help of pull peddling government bureaucrats.

If anyone is operating under the fantasy that a trip to the government health care clinic will somehow be fundamentally different from a trip to the Department of Motor vehicles or any other bloated alphabet soup bureaucracy, perhaps they should stop by a VA hospital or ask the veterans how great Uncle Sam is as “Doctor in Chief”.

Honestly, this really is not a difficult proposition to understand. Just ask yourself what happens when a radio station offers free gas giveaways or any other highly prized “freebie”. The result of course, lines around the block and many of those who were not in line first end up receiving no benefit at all, thus leaving them with a net loss in gasoline due to the time wasted idling.

The same rules of supply and demand apply to health care, which is thus why one result of government run health care are people waiting unacceptable times for time sensitive health services such as dentistry, cancer therapies, et al.

Moreover, please do not misconstrue my disdain for government managed health care as a philosophy of turning a blind eye to those in need. Once, when the economy was humming along, my income reflected such, and we had a sizable savings, our family helped several long time friends with rent, food, and basic necessities some for close to a year.

We enjoyed having the opportunity to help those who we personally knew and were invested in their well being. Additionally, it also made it possible for us to withdraw those resources when in one particular instance, our friend ended up squandering our help by refusing to look for a job and instead chose to endlessly play video games for close to seven months.

However, now things are different. Our life savings exhausted after needing to retain an attorney in order to secure justice from the courts during a three-year legal battle, and with a substantial reduction in my income from an overall decline in business at my employer, we now find ourselves the recipients of some charity from a close personal family friend who is not independently wealthy.

This is how we as Americans help each other. Americans are not stingy, we the People help one another, ’tis an example repeated continuously from one coast to the other. Family helping family, neighbors helping neighbors, friends helping friends, strangers helping strangers.

What we do not do is steal from each other, or ask government to do so for us, and pretend our needs somehow outweigh those of the other person or group, thereby justifying the theft.

Perhaps I am alone in my vision of America or the “more perfect Union”. Nevertheless the America to which my allegience lies is an America who does not torture, does not wage aggressive interventionist wars, spies on her own people, or pretends to redefine the word theft as health care.

Nor shall I ever claim citizenship to the Neo-America which attempts to justify the aforementioned. To that bastardized amalgamation, I shall forever remain a vocal enemy of the state.

Don’t tread on us.

From HotAir.com

0: The number of unrehearsed, unscripted questions asked of President Obama during his “Town Hall” on health care reform.

13: The number of teeth that British veteran Ian Boynton pulled out himself with pliers “because he couldn’t find an NHS (National Health Service) dentist… [he] could not afford to go private for treatment so instead took the drastic action to remove 13 of his teeth that were giving him severe pain.”

14: The percentage of all patients in Britain who wait more than one (1) year to receive treatment after a referral by a general practitioner. Half of all National Health Care patients in Britain wait between 18 and 52 weeks for treatment.

37: The “health care ranking” assigned to the U.S. by the World Health Organization among the world’s countries. This oft-quoted number is used to justify an overhaul of the U.S. health care system and lists countries like Italy (2), Andorra (4), Malta (5), Singapore (6), Oman (8), Portugal (12), Greece (14), the United Kingdom (18), Ireland (19), Columbia (22), Cyprus (24), Saudi Arabia (26), the UAE (27), Morocco (29), Canada (30), Chile (33), the Dominican Republic (35) and Costa Rica (36) ahead of the U.S. Considering that noU.S. citizens travel to these countries when experiencing a life-threatening situation, it’s worth questioning the methods by which the WHO arrived at these rankings. Their criteria included subjective and political assessments such as “Fairness in financial contribution“. Suffice it to say that the WHO’s rankings are clearly fraudulent and are designed to influence U.S. policy.

60: Average cancer survival rate (all types) for patients in the United States. Canada’s survival rate is significantly lower at 55%, while Europe’s is a dismal 48%.

81: Average percentage of those who survive a diagnosis of prostate cancer in the United States versus 43% in Britain under their National Health Service.

90: Number of days, on average, each Canadian patient must wait for an MRI under the Canadian government-run health care system.

750: The estimated number of people waiting in line (in the pouring rain) at Britain’s Bury Office attempting to register for dental care.

2050: By this year, “Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (health care for the poor) will consume nearly the entire federal budget.” And by 2082, Medicare spending alone will consume the entire federal budget. This trajectory is, quite obviously, unsustainable for our children and our grandchildren. Congress is bequeathing our descendents a bankrupt health care system — for just the third of the medical system that the government already runs!

10,000: Number of Canadian breast cancer patients to file a class action lawsuit against Quebec’s hospitals because, on average, they were forced to wait 60 days to begin post-operative radiation treatments.

280,392: The number of jobs that employers would shed if government levied an employer mandate, requiring them to insure all employees. A 2007 study by Katherine Baicker of Harvard University and Helen Levy of the University of Michigan (“Employer Health Insurance Mandates and the Risk of Unemployment“) found that “0.2 percent of all full-time workers and 1.4 percent of uninsured full-time workers would lose their jobs if a health insurance mandate were written into law. Workers who would lose their jobs are disproportionately likely to be high school dropouts, minority, and female.”

443,849: The number of British patients of the National Healthcare Service (NHS) who waited four or more weeks for inpatient admittance into a hospital (Excel file) in May of 2009 (more than 75% of all patients).

1,500,000: The number of Canadians who do not have — and cannot find — a general practitioner/primary care physician due to shortages in medical staff: “In Norwood, Ontario,20/20 videotaped a town clerk pulling the names of the lucky winners out of alottery box. The losers must wait to see a doctor… Shirley Healy, like many sick Canadians, came to America for surgery. Her doctor in British Columbia told her she had only a few weeks to live because a blocked artery kept her from digesting food. Yet Canadian officials called her surgery ‘elective.’ …’The only thing elective about this surgery was I elected to live,’ she said.”

12,000,000: number of illegal immigrants who would qualify for free health care and — in all likelihood — additional health care rights for relatives under the Democrats’ universal health care plan, according to a reported statement by the office of Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and spokespeople for the racial separatist group La Raza.

$311,000,000 ($311 million): The amount of additional funding requested last month by the Obama administration simply to combat Medicare fraud. Medicare fraud is estimated at $60 billion annually.

$3,600,000,000 ($3.6 billion): The amount of added malpractice insurance costs to the current health care system instigated by an out-of-control trial lawyer lobby that donates heavily to Democrat causes.

$10,000,000,000 ($10 billion): The estimated amount of Medicaid fraud, based upon FBI estimates. Criminal practices include billing for nonexistent, overstated, or unnecessary services, kickbacks to patients, inflated costs, etc.

$60,000,000,000 ($60 billion): The estimated annual amount of Medicare fraud, due to widespread criminal operations that victimize taxpayers and specialize in dead doctors, fake patients, non-existent treatments and the like.

$107,000,000,000,000 ($107 trillion): The estimated shortfall of the Medicare and Social Security programs, which are utterly and completely bankrupt; they can be legitimately called an “enormous version of Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme”.

Canada and England don’t pay as high a price for their health care because they freeload on American innovation. If we utilized their systems, Americans might worry less about paying for health care, but we’d get 2009-level care and long lines. Those are the immutable laws of supply and demand. Government monopolies don’t innovate. Only the free market innovates.

Furthermore, government bureaucrats already raped the Social Security Trust Fund — there is no trust fund. They raped the Medicare Trust Fund — there’s nothing left. They raped the Highway Trust Fund — it’s empty. I could go down a long list of things the government said it would do, but hasn’t done. Because the big government statists are liars. They even moved these massive expenditures “off the books” to conceal the damage they’ve done.

And now the Democrat Party, the union bosses and the trial lawyers are launching the most massive attack on the American people in the history of government.

They promise health care for everyone, but they will not — and they can’t possibly — deliver it. The numbers don’t lie.

References: Sick in America: ‘Free’ Is Good? (ABC News), There’s no such thing as free health care (Reason Magazine), Social Security and Medicare Projections: 2009 (National Center for Policy Analysis), Who is Debby Smith?, E.R. P.R., Bureau of Labor Statistics, July 2009.

Should Congress Impose Health Care on Us?

By Sheldon Richman

In the debate over medical reform, everyone can find a public-opinion poll to support his or her position. Robert Reich, who favors deeper government involvement in health care than we already have, wrote recently, “In the most recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, 76% of respondents said it was important that Americans have a choice between a public and private health-insurance plan. In last week’s New York Times/CBSNews poll, 85% said they wanted major health-care reforms.”

Yet Catherine Rampell, economics editor for nytimes.com, reports there has been “no sea change in public opinion” about healthcare reform. She cites Nolan McCarty of Princeton University, who shows that public support for a government overhaul of the medical industry was higher in 1993, when the Clinton plan failed, than it is today.

Of course, we always have reason for suspicion about public opinion polls, since pollsters can get the results they want by how they frame the questions, especially the all-important preliminary questions. People aren’t laboratory rats, and some respondents may be as interested in impressing the pollster as in speaking their minds. Definitive proof of the case for suspicion was provided some years ago by an episode of the satirical BBC television program Yes, Prime Minister, the key scene of which is here.

So What?

But let’s not stop there. We may grant that “the public” want (as the British would say) the government to set up an insurance program to compete with private insurers and are even willing “to pay higher taxes so that all Americans have health insurance that they can’t lose no matter what.”

So what? By asking this question, I am not displaying naïveté. Politicians of course will use a favorable poll for cover when they do what they want to do anyway.

I mean something else: Why should the people get something through government–that is, at the point of a gun–simply because they want it? We make that assumption reflexively, but why? Fifty-seven percent may be willing to pay higher taxes for universal health insurance, but let’s not overlook what else they are willing to do: tax the 37 percent who aren’t willing to pay higher taxes. (Six percent don’t know if they are willing or not. Sigh.)

H. L. Mencken long ago defined democracy as the “the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” The problem is that those who don’t want it get it, too. When it comes to government programs, there’s no opt-out provision. Alas, what distinguishes “free” from unfree countries is the freedom to speak out, not to opt out. In the latter respect, all are unfree.

What about that 37 percent who would be ignored? If they don’t count, they needn’t have had their time wasted by the pollster. As Bruno Leoni wrote, “[I]n assuming that 51 voters out of 100 are ‘politically’ equal to 100 voters, and that the remaining 49 (contrary) voters are ‘politically’ equal to zero (which is exactly what happens when a group decision is made according to majority rule) we give much more ‘weight’ to each voter ranking on the side of the winning 51 than to each voter ranking on the side of the losing 49.” (See my article  “The Crazy Arithmetic of Voting.”)

Well, it might be said, in our system the majority rules. Standing alone, this principle sounds rather ominous, so the speaker usually hastens to add, “but the rights of the minority are protected.” But really now, which is it? Do the majority rule or are the rights of the minority protected? I really don’t see how you can have it both ways.

Misrepresentatives

Our “representatives”–more aptly, our “misrepresentatives”–are supposed to sort out all this complicated stuff, but don’t bet on their squaring the circle any time soon.

The upshot is that they will decide what kind of healthcare system we will have. To the extent they take into consideration what some of the people whom they “represent” want, it is only because they are looking to the next election.

All of which leads me to the question of why we even see these decision-makers as our representatives rather than as our rulers. Think about this: The average congressional district has a population of well over 600,000 people. In Montana, one congressman allegedly represents the state’s entire population of 967,440. The populations of the states range from about half a million (Wyoming) to 36.7 million (California).

Honestly now, who really believes that anyone can actually represent such large and diverse groups of people? (Credit the Antifederalists, or anti-Rats, with another legitimate concern about centralized power.) Are we playing games when we talk about representation under those circumstances?

The Fiction of Representative Government

What got me thinking about this the other day is an essay by the highly respected historian Edmund Morgan, emeritus professor of history at Yale University and prolific author of books on America’s colonial and revolutionary era. His latest book is a collection of previously published papers with the self-explanatory title American Heroes: Profiles of Men and Women Who Shaped Early America. (Hat tip: Jeffrey Rogers Hummel.) But Morgan departs from that theme in a couple of chapters, including Chapter 15, “The Founding Fathers’ Problem: Representation.”

Morgan begins by noting that all governments rest on consent; specifically, the governors are few and the governed are many and thus potentially more powerful than the governors. Therefore the governed must be persuaded to believe that obeying the government is the right thing to do. This is the role ideology plays: It constitutes “opinions to sustain their consent.”

“The few who govern take care to nourish those opinions, and that is no easy task, for the opinions needed to make the many submit to the few are often at variance with the facts,” Morgan writes. “The success of government thus requires the acceptance of fictions, requires the willing suspension of disbelief, requires us to believe that the emperor is clothed even though we can see that he is not.” (Emphasis added.)

In democratic countries such as the United States, those fictions include the idea of representation, as well as the idea that our “representatives” are mere members of the governed like the rest of us. It doesn’t take a lengthy visit to Washington, D.C., or even a state capital, to be disabused of that latter fiction.

Fictions endure only as long as they are useful, and the one regarding representation is quite useful. Morgan writes, “And just as the exaltation of the king could be a means of controlling him, so the exaltation of the people can be a means of controlling them. …In locating the source of authority in the people, they ["the men who first promoted popular government"] thought to locate its exercise in themselves. They intended to speak for a sovereign but silent people, as the king had hitherto spoken for a sovereign but silent God.”

Morgan is unequivocal: “Representation from the beginning was a fiction. If the representative consented [to the king's taxes or laws], his constituents had to make believe that they had done so.” The problem was not only that often a perfect stranger deigned to represent individuals he knew little about, but also that he had a conflicting mandate: to represent his district while also looking out for the welfare of the whole country. This second part was useful in making representative bodies into modern aristocracies. (We leave aside the further problem that for much of the history of representative government, many people were not allowed to vote.)

“The sovereignty of the people was an instrument by which representatives raised themselves to the maximum distance above the particular set of people who chose them,” Morgan adds. “In the name of the people they became all-powerful in government, shedding as much as possible the local, subject character that made them representatives.”

Morgan connects these considerations to the American Revolution, the Articles of Confederation, and the goals of the Constitutional Convention. But bear in mind that he is not a radical critic of the American political system. He’s no anti-Rat. Yet he concedes that centralization of power under the Constitution was intended to restore representation to its fictive status, since it had become more real in the small legislative districts within the states during the Confederation period. As he writes, “The fictions of popular sovereignty embodied in the federal Constitution may have strained credulity, but they did not break it.”

Alas, that topic must be left for another time. For now, as the Senate and House of “Representatives” deliberate whether to give even more control over your health care to bureaucrats, ask yourself what taxation with representation has wrought.