How Expensive is Free Health Care?

I don’t support universal health care, a fact which boggles the mind of my more liberal co-workers. I think government control will do nothing but create another permanent bureaucracy, which will help those it employs more than those it serves. Studies consistently show that people contradict themselves, too. Ask someone, “Do you want more government,” and most say No. Ask them if they want free health care and they say yes.
That’s the problem. There is no such thing as free health care. It comes with a price. For those of you who think the price can’t possibly be higher than it is now, go to Canada, break a leg and visit an ER. Good luck.

Government wastes more than it spends, or so I say. She replied that we could save by cutting some of the waste we already have. For instance, did you know that according to Pubmed.gov, last year of life expenses account for 22% of all medical bills in the USA? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12546289?dopt=Abstract She also brought up the obscene amount of prescription drugs the elderly use-and I agree there.

This got me thinking. Do seniors have a duty to die on time? We have an aging society, where people are both living longer and having fewer children. There’s an ever smaller percentage of us working, and an increasing number of elderly or disabled people we’re supporting.
Social security was never intended to work this way. It was supposed to be an ancillary. Looking at government statistics (yes, they’re boring, but they’re important) reveals some sobering facts. http://www.ssa.gov/pubs/10055-supplement.html Did you know only 69% of recipients are retirees? Did you know that in 1960 there were 5.1 people paying in for every person collecting? In 2006, that number was 3.3.
Why is that bad? For starters, the government lied to us. They were supposed to take the money collected from workers and put it in a lock box, or, better yet, invest it. They didn’t. It’s the government. They spent it. They didn’t tell us, and in typical fashion, people didn’t pay attention or demand accountability. It’s too late to do anything about it. We have to tax current workers to pay current retirees. People under 40 should really think about that, too. You’re supporting your elders. You better have more kids if you want the next generation to support you.
In 1960, this system worked, of course, because if you were a worker, you weren’t supporting a retiree by your lonesome. There were 4.1 other taxpayers sharing the burden with you. Now there are only 2.3, and you’re supporting not only retirees, but the disabled and the widows of deceased retirees sometimes. Worse, in 2032, at the current pace, there will only be 2.1 people paying in for every person collecting. You’ll have one person helping you.

Why bother working? In order to support a vast non-working population, the few who are working will have to be very productive, and earn a lot, because taxes will be enormous. Anybody that says otherwise is either wrong and/or likely pushing retirement age themselves. You can’t go from having 83% of the population working to only 67% and not have a decreased standard of living.

I said all of this just to get to my point: Seniors have a duty to die on time, and young and middle age people should seriously consider having more children as well. Between the need for us young whipper-snappers to support them generally, and the fact they their decrepit bodies incur massive medical bills just to survive, it’s too much burden to bear. Time to get tough on grandma and grandpa.
You’re 75 and have prostate cancer? Sorry, but new laws dictate that we longer treat serious illnesses like cancer and heart disease among the retired. Think about what a double whammy that would be for productivity. Not only would we stop wasting money on those who are only going to live a few more years anyway, but we’d create a whole new group of productive taxpayers when we stop rewarding these lazy loungers for retiring.
Seniors never used to live this long, either. They’re killing those of us that are supposed to be in the prime of our lives. We can start with my grandfather. He’s 93, hasn’t worked in two decades and is a walking medical bill. He’s got pills for everything. Sorry, grandpa, your time limit is up. We’re not going to pay for you anymore.

We don’t have to stop there, either. The sick, the weak, the unproductive, the disabled, all can be done away with to save on expenses and preserve precious resources for those of us in our productive years.

It’s all for the greater good. Unless, of course, you still have human feelings. Unless you think that there’s something more to being a human being, in which case we should stop your bleeding heart from beating first, before even grandma and grandpa.

As you may have guessed, I’m being sarcastic about euthanizing people or not helping those in need. I am not being sarcastic about health care. I don’t claim to have an easy solution, but there’s the problem, isn’t it?
I cringe when I hear Hillary Clinton talking about solutions. I’m wary of anyone who wants to use government as a solution to societal ills. She’s no Hitler, of course, but the most famous solution proposed by any government I can think of was Hitler’s, “Final Solution.”
Truth is, there are no easy solutions, certainly not by government. We’re all looking for the easy way, when there is no easy way. The answer is hard work, good decision making and taking better care of ourselves. Yes, that’s right, you, the health care consumer have a responsibility to take care of yourself. I am not joking when I say that we should stop helping people who destroy themselves. If you’re diabetic and eat chocolate cake every night, there’s no point helping you. And in general, people of every age are too reliant on doctors and doctors are too reliant on pills (follow the money).

I don’t argue that there is a huge problem with our health care bureaucracy. But please don’t be fooled by those who promise easy solutions. When Hillary Clinton says Obama promises hope, while she promises solutions, I say be wary. Be very wary and be careful what you wish for. Sometimes you get it, and it isn’t what you thought. I know what it won’t be, and that’s free. In fact, I could think of nothing more expensive than free health care.