While not receiving as many front page headlines as it did this summer and fall, the health care debate continues to rage in Washington. Recently, for starters, numbers showing the modest profits of health insurers became widespread in the media. This is a good thing, because the more educated the American people become on health care, the more likely they are to be concerned about government as a panacea for health care.
Of course, there are still those out there for whom government is the cure-all. Terry Schleder and Emil Shaw recently wrote an article on health care on behalf of the New Mexico Alliance for Retired Americans. Judging from their article which can be accessed here, the organization (or at least the perspective of the authors) is well to the left of AARP and just to the right of Mao.
Their arguments are summarized as follows:
1) Medicare is great (ignore those trillion dollar unfunded liabilities);
2) Health care is a human right (regardless of who is forced to provide it to us);
3) “Quasi-privatized” Medicaid and “parasitic” Medicare Advantage programs are evil (this despite the fact that as government programs, both are far from resembling anything oriented towards the free market);
So, that’s the basic left-wing point of view here in New Mexico. Never mind the concept of unlimited wants and limited resources. The health care fairy (government) knows what is best and will provide everything for everyone. No tradeoffs required except getting rid of those nasty businesses involved in health care.
On that note, check out NTU’s recent letter to MoveOn demanding a “public option” for all areas of the economy, not just health care.
Paul,
What we have here in the USA is “Socialism” for the arms industry, the wealthy, and sociopaths … with many spinoffs for the morally/ethically impaired.
As far as health care goes, you should really do some diligent research, try sources outside of the National Review, as your hard right stance on “health care socialism” sounds both uninformed and equivocal.
Begin here
If you want something to really get angry about, try the nearly trillion dollar military budget.
Go pick up Chalmers Johnson’s excellent Blowback trilogy?
Still think that we don’t deserve what every civilized country in the world offers its citizens?
Shalom.
A
You are right Alex. We do indeed have military socialism in this country. The Founding Fathers originally set up militias at the state level. I think there are many advantages to that. And, yes, I agree with you, much of the military spending that goes on is unnecessary and rather wasteful. Military drafts: http://riograndefoundation.org/errorsofenchantment.com/2006/12/27/the-economic-case-against-a-military-draft/ are one area that we’ve criticized in this area. We can start by convincing New Mexico politicians that attracting military bases and additional government spending in general to the state is not a means for growing the state economy.