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Massachusetts So-Called Health Care SolutionAs a Massachusetts resident, allow me to say a few words about the state's alleged "health care solution," which is currently going into effect amid fawning media kudos to would-be President Mitt Romney.
The idea behind government in general is that our tax dollars and other resources (like fees) are pooled to promote the general welfare. The argument over exactly what constitutes "general welfare" pretty clearly outlines the difference between the right and left segments of American politics. Health care is as hotly contested as any single issue within this ouvre.
I cannot conceive of how someone comes up with the idea of forcing citizens to purchase a product from a corporation under the penalty of law. And make no mistake, that's exactly what is happening here.
Critics of nationalized healthcare argue that it's "intrusive" for government to simply provide healthcare to the people. But forcing people to purchase healthcare independently is far, far more intrusive than outright socialism. It takes money out of your pocket and puts that money into a vested corporate interest -- the health insurance industry, easily the most bloated and wasteful corporate bureaucracy in existence.
The health insurance industry exists for only one reason -- to perpetuate the profits of the health insurance industry. It ties up trillions of dollars in cash reserves -- money that could be used to create new companies -- and it is responsible for the employment of hundreds of thousands of people (both in the companies and in hospitals) whose sole productivity function is to serve the bureaucratic demands of the health insurance industry itself.
It's an ourobouros of an industry sector, constantly eating its own tail. It ties up and wastes trillions of dollars -- each YEAR -- and only a fraction of that money is actually spent on its purported goal of providing health care to people.
Using the law to force citizens to purchase ANYTHING from a private company is plutocracy, plain and simple. And forcing citizens to support the most devastating waste of resources in human history is just obscene.
Worst of all, this strategy exists solely for the sake of polemic -- so that policymakers don't have to "socialize" medicine.
Instead, they are "capitalizing" the insurance industry at the expense of citizens.
It robs us of a choice far more fundamental than the spurious "provider choice" issues deployed to sink the Clinton Health Plan more than a decade ago. In Massachusetts, it's now illegal "not to buy."
Capitalism works in an environment of maximum freedom, and that most emphatically includes the freedom to opt out. This health care "plan" incorporates the worst elements of socialism and captialism into something less effective than either.
Posted by J.M. Berger || Permalink
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