Free Health Care

March 24, 2010 - Leave a Response

This article was written in 2007 – but is interesting seeing how some of his predictions are coming to pass.

Nothing free about universal health care – including unhealthy BMI
PAUL MULSHINE
Article Last Updated: 09/12/2007 05:48:30 PM CDT

We owe a debt of thanks to John Edwards for explaining what Michael
Moore was talking about.

In his recent movie “Sicko,” Moore called for the United States to
adopt a universal health care system. In a recent campaign appearance
in Iowa, Democratic presidential candidate Edwards explained his
vision of how such a system would work:

“It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get
preventive care,” Edwards said at a town meeting. “If you are going to
be in the system, you can’t choose not to go to the doctor for 20
years. You have to go in and be checked and make sure that you are
OK.”

The report went on to say that under the Edwards plan, women would be
required to have mammograms to find “the first trace of problem.”

But what about women who don’t want mammograms? Will they be hauled in
handcuffs to the hospital?

Edwards didn’t say. But at least you have to give him credit for
warning the American people up front about just what he has in mind
for us. Most backers of universal health coverage talk only about the
positives. Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney loves to
boast about the universal health plan he implemented as Massachusetts
governor. But he somehow neglects to mention the big fines that kick
in next year for Massachusetts residents who fail to buy the required
insurance.

The message of Moore’s recent movie was that people in other countries
get “free” health care. But as Edwards so eloquently

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pointed out, free health care can be incompatible with freedom. The
only logical end is government control of the most intimate decisions
in life.
Imagine that Edwards wins the presidency and immediately implements
his plan, as he has said he intends to do. By 2010 or so, Moore might
be told to report for his mandatory annual checkup. The doctor might
inform him that as a 6-2 guy who weighs 305 pounds, his body mass
index is a very unhealthy 39. To get down to a healthy BMI of 25, he’d
have to lose 100 pounds. Perhaps he’d be ordered to report for morning
jogging sessions.

Or imagine the typical cigarette smoker at checkup time. Perhaps he’d
be told to stop smoking under penalty of being refused advanced
treatment if he later developed lung cancer. Sound far-fetched? That’s
already been proposed in England, which has had socialized medicine
for almost 60 years.

The Tory Party recently recommended that the National Health Service
refuse to pay for certain life-saving treatments for people who refuse
to refrain from unhealthful behaviors. Meanwhile, the government would
subsidize gym memberships and healthy diets for those who take their
doctors’ advice.

“It is inconsistent with the concept of the responsible citizen to
imagine that it is realistic for citizens, having paid their taxes, to
expect that the state will underwrite the health implications of any
lifestyle decision they choose to make,” said the statement from the
Tories.

They’re the conservatives in England, by the way. But whether you’re a
God-save-the-queen conservative or a knee-jerk liberal like Edwards,
the logic of universal health care leads to the same conclusion. And
that conclusion is: There’s no such thing as a free lunch, especially
not the kind of high-fat, high-calorie lunch that both the English and
Americans tend to favor.

That’s why the United States is unlikely to have universal coverage
anytime soon. The plans always founder on the high cost of covering
the approximately 44 million Americans who lack health insurance. Many
of these are working people who make too much to qualify for
subsidized coverage but not enough to afford private health insurance.
Massachusetts has already exempted about 20 percent of the uninsured
from the mandate.

But imagine if the U.S. had long ago adopted a plan similar to the
French and English systems highlighted in Moore’s movie. I can think
of one major advantage: We never would have heard of John Edwards. The
former U.S. senator first made his fortune suing doctors. A New York
Times article reported that he had more than 42 multimillion-dollar
settlements and another 33 that were close to a million.

He couldn’t have done that in France or England, says Mike Tanner, a
health care expert with the free-market Cato Institute. In those
countries, “it’s very hard to sue,” Tanner said. This keeps costs down
since malpractice insurance is cheap. In fact, the average salary of a
French doctor, about $55,000 a year, wouldn’t even cover the
malpractice insurance bill of some surgeons and ob-gyn physicians in
America. No system of universal health care can afford the
lottery-style tort awards that plague the American system.

So if Edwards somehow wins the election and institutes his system, he
will have accomplished one positive thing: John Edwards will have rid
the American system of people like John Edwards.

Now that’s progress.

Paul Mulshine is a columnist for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. His
e-mail address is at pmulshine@hotmail.com.

Cat Ladies

February 11, 2009 - 2 Responses

 

We’ve heard the stories before; “Old Lady Found Dead Suffocated by Cats.” Law enforcement agents are probably getting used to clearing out trailers full of cats by now. But what an interesting phenomenon. It’s never turtles or gerbils, and it’s never just five or ten. It’s always hundreds of cats!

It took three hours for about 15 masked workers and police officers to remove 118 cats from a couple’s reeking home in the Lowry Grove Mobile Home Park in St. Anthony on Tuesday.

Another dozen or so cats couldn’t be captured because they were hiding in mounds of dolls and debris in the trailer and will have to be live-trapped, said Keith Streff, senior investigator of the Animal Humane Society in Golden Valley. One cat escaped and three were left with the couple, the limit permitted by city ordinance.

This was from our local paper, and what’s unwritten here is that this couple had 72 cats removed from their home in 2003. 

Let me point out something you may have missed; these 15 police officers could not retrieve a dozen cats because they were hiding in MOUNDS OF DOLLS! Read that again. Think about that. How many dolls would it take to prevent a team of 15 police officers from capturing twelve cats? I heard that these dolls were everywhere. The police found them frozen in the freezer!

They’re looking into mental illness, but it’s got to be something more. You would think that one of them would say, “Honey, I can’t fill the ice cube tray unless I take out a few of these dolls.” Something else is going on here, and as you think about reasons it becomes less funny and more pathetic, and really, just sad.

Good News The Recession is Over!

January 20, 2009 - 3 Responses

I just heard the news this afternoon. The recession is over and the key to it’s demise was in our minds all along. It turns out that hiding in our homes and shielding our money was really what was precipitating this recession. Our fear sent the markets crashing and made banks weary of lending money. The media were scaring us under our beds and businesses were cutting jobs in case we listened to them. Well good thing we stopped being afraid or this thing could have dragged on and on. So if you hear people on the street saying “Oh, I can’t in this economy.” or “I wonder when the recession is over?” Tell them the news, “It IS over!” And it will be.

Guest Post: “Ironic” T-shirts

December 22, 2008 - 5 Responses
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Here’s a post from my ever-bitter friend J. Viese. Thanks!

“Ironic” T- Shirts. Oh my Lord!  When is this going to end?

Do you remember when it seemed like reality TV was finally on the respirator and execs. had their communal hand on the plug; then Laguna Beach and it’s unholy offspring hit the air and brought it all back worse then ever?

That seems to be where we are with these definition-busting “Ironic” tees.

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The NHL

October 31, 2008 - 3 Responses

 

Do NHL players need these?

Do NHL players need these?

I read this week that the NHL was thinking about calling penalties on players who slide in front of a shooting puck. The league is looking for ways to increase scoring and thus, they believe, popularity. They tried this a few years ago by changing some rules and the sizes of goalie pads. They believe that the reason people don’t watch the NHL is because there just isn’t enough scoring. Maybe, they should look at the world’s most popular sport. Soccer games often end in 0 – 0 ties and the fans still are howling and cheering when it all ends. Scoring is not the problem, but here are some…

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Great Designs: Automatic Bathrooms

October 6, 2008 - 2 Responses

 

My elbows are the dirtiest part of my body. I use them to touch the nastiest things around. If I spill something or need to wipe off my seat, I’ll always use my handy elbow to scrub it up. When I’m in a public restroom I look like a doctor or a T-Rex walking around with my elbows stuck out trying to get paper towels out of the dispenser. I know I’m not the only one out there. Look around and you’ll see us, we’re the ones with long sleeves on a hot summer day…

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Debt

September 16, 2008 - 4 Responses

There is a lot of talk about change this election and how these two guys are going to be reformers or mavericks. I believe in them and I am hopeful, but when the new president walks into the oval office there are going to be some IOU’s on his desk that total more than $1,500,000,000,000. Becoming president is not like baking a cake. You don’t have nice clean kitchen and a fridge full of wonderfull ingredients. What you have is what the last guy left in the fridge for you. In our case W left it empty and the neighbors are knocking on the door for their cups of sugar back.

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College

August 21, 2008 - 4 Responses

 

A lot has been made of the price of gas, food and health insurance recently. But I saw this graph on CNN and I thought it deserved more attention. It was shocking to see this and read elsewhere that college increases are four times the rate of inflation. The weird part is that the price of college doesn’t follow normal economics. The higher the price, the more parents will want to send their child there. “Well it must be good,” they’ll say. Public universities also baffle me with their increases. How on earth can the price of a university jump 439%? What could possibly drive the costs up that much? It’s not breaking news that the cost of higher education is out of control, and actually that’s not really what I wanted to talk about anyway. I’m not questioning college or even it’s soaring price. I’m wondering if it’s time to question whether it’s worth it.

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Navy Blue

August 7, 2008 - 2 Responses
After arriving to work a few weeks ago, someone stopped me in the hall and asked, “Did you bike here?” “No. Why?” I said. The man just pointed to my left pant leg which had gotten tucked into my black sock. I quickly un-tucked it and then noticed the sock wasn’t black…it was navy blue! I had two different socks on. The guy was already walking away, but I’m sure he noticed that too. He just had pity on me, I’m sure he had been there before. Who hasn’t? Everyone has mixed up a navy blue sock with a black one or wore navy blue pants with a black belt. There are endless combinations. Well, there’s at least three, but the point is that navy blue does more harm than good.
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