Grow up.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story//us-job-losses-accelerate-to-263000-in-september-2009-10-02

and this

http://wallstreetpit.com/10824-jim-rogers-says-us-government-lies-true-inflation-6-7

And no, the elite of the Democratic Party has not been interested in nationalised healthcare for a long, long time.

Some of you live in a fantasy world whereby all Democratic Party pols are socialist bureaucrats who only dream of making a lame form of the USSR. In reality, these are elected politicians who take their funding heavily from the insurance “industries”, from the financial services parasites, law firms, etc.

Your scapegoat of the 90-IQ govt bureaucrat is not all that powerful.

Democrats Aim for Nationalized Healthcare, Again

With the economy in recessional throws the likes not seen for two decades, more Americans find themselves worrying about essential services, one of them being healthcare. While crushing costs mount on more families, corollary pressure mounts on those who defend our still largely free market system. Recognizing the lure that “free” care has on citizens in times of uncertainty eager Democrats reigniting the political war whose last casualty was Hillarycare in ’94. The latest legal changes to our public health system have been stealthily introduced through little publicized provisions in the stimulus bill. In light of such tactics, it is important Americans looking to protect our most basic rights understand the critical differences between government run healthcare and private healthcare. But first, a little history on the topic…

The American Left has sought nationalized (socialized, “universal”) healthcare in one form or another since the time of FDR, who authorized the creation of the Social Security Administration, in many ways its ideological predecessor. Harry Truman sought nationalization in the form of a social security expansion bill that never passed, but Lyndon Johnson picked up the flag for a big victory in the 60’s, instituting Medicare and Medicaid. Three decades later the Clintons met defeat. According to Senator Tom Daschle, President Obama’s initial nominee to head Health and Human Services, this defeat was due chiefly to a drawn-out process which allowed opponents to rally popular support. Well don’t blink this time around! Government dole has already expanded under the guise of crisis relief.

In particular, two provisions in the recent stimulus bill work simultaneously to raise the State Children’s Health Insurance Program maximum income to $87,000 annually (for a family of four) and to extend 100% Medicaid coverage for unemployed families, with no maximum asset limitations. Funding for these programmatic extensions is provided by the Federal government. This new set of laws serves to, in effect, move people who are currently privately insured (or are likely to be in the near future) into a federal system. In perilous economic times, such relief seems to make a popular political issue, appealing to the electorate and politicians. If this is the case, one might ask in all earnest: why would it to little more than a footnote in an 1,100 page bill, too massive for public scrutiny? To answer this question it helps to illuminate some of the looming dangers of nationalized healthcare.

First, consider some economics of the healthcare industry. The debate in many ways is about how best to lower costs to expand access: free-marketers (often Republicans, though not always) wish to increase supply, while Democrats wish to decrease (i.e. ration) demand. This is because, for better or worse, healthcare is an expensive undertaking: practicing medicine requires protracted education, followed by years of training; debts incurred through medical school must be repaid, putting a necessary premium on the price of care; investment costs for the latest treatment technology can run into the millions; the cost of prescription drugs must recoup all research and development costs and provide incentive for further discovery. In short, healthcare is a resource intensive industry from a human capital and technological standpoint, and is so ultimately because we choose to spend money on promoting our own health.

Next to consider is who, or what, would have ultimate decision making power – decisions of life and death – under a nationalized healthcare system. This power currently resides with the patient, who is free to seek any care he should like, provided he has the means to pay. It would be shifted to government, which could refuse treatment. There would likely be no legal recourse for a bad, even unjust decision, as government could pass legislation prohibiting lawsuits from originating against itself. The much-maligned private health insurance system looks more attractive in the face of government monopoly. I leave it to the reader to judge the likelihood of high-ranking government officials receiving priority care over Joe and Jane Public.

Finally, the most dehumanizing aspect of nationalized healthcare arises from the disruption government necessary rationing inflicts on the doctor-patient relationship. It is important to recall that only under a budgeted healthcare system can there be cost overruns. (Under our current system, this scenario would be described as high demand, and would serve to attract new industry employees.) From a budgetary standpoint, one partial solution to cost overruns is reducing costs; in this case, doctors must refuse treatment they otherwise may have considered. The well-being of the patient is subjugated to the needs of the bureau, which orders from atop the crude application state-crafted of ratios that arbitrarily determine the societal trade-offs between two treatments. Much like other government agencies, with nationalized healthcare the doctor thus becomes a highly educated bureaucrat and the patient a mere statistic.

Democrats seem intent on taking the low road to nationalizing the world’s preeminent healthcare system. Before cheerleading these incremental steps, all citizens should be mindful of the deleterious effects of nationalization on their own health. It would do them well.

“The plan is not perfect — for the better, I’d say; anything that is “perfect” is probably going to bring about our doom —, and though nothing about it strikes me as being unConstitutional prima facie, I have no doubt that some part of Médaille’s vision or another may require mending to fit within Constitutional frameworks (presuming that those really matter).”