Throwing Gasoline On A Fire
February 21, 2008
Liberal politicians rank among the dumbest people on the planet...and/or the most dishonest.
Promising mandatory national healthcare in the midst of Social Security’s and Medicare’s voodoo economics is the all-time dumbest domestic policy proposal in U.S. history. Although, it does earn a 10+ for the best scheme that ever came out of a whore house.
It’s even more MADD(ening) than giving an eighteen year old soldier a 1500 horsepower M1 Abrams tank and simultaneously denying him the right to drink a beer.
Setting aside all of the microeconomic rational for the high cost of healthcare (inconsequential things like supply and demand curves), the single reason making national healthcare a galactically stupid idea is simple. It will destroy what is left of the U.S. economy’s integrity.
In the beginning of 2008, Moody’s, a top credit rating agency said that, “The United States is at risk of losing its triple-A credit rating within a decade unless it takes radical action to curb Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid spending.”
The U.S. has enjoyed a triple-A rating since it was first granted at the inception of US government debt in 1917 and the loss of a triple-A rating would put U.S. citizens and the U.S economy at such a global competitive disadvantage that India might start outsourcing low-wage jobs back to our shores.
Welcome to the Third World.
A senior fellow at the CATO Institute sums it up bleakly, “Consider that the Social Security and Medicare Administrations have estimated those programs' total financial imbalances at a staggering $90 trillion. Interest on that implicit debt at the government's interest rate of 3 percent implies currently accruing costs of $2.7 trillion per year—more than 10 times larger than today's federal budget deficits.”
This economic catastrophe is not a “maybe” for somewhere down the road...it is happening right now.
By 2017 (less than 9 short years from now) the Social Security Administration will begin paying more in benefits than it collects in taxes and by 2042 the Social Security Trust Fund will be exhausted. Of course the Social Security Trust Fund is nothing more than a mirage. Your elected officials have been pilfering it since day one and its assets are nothing more than IOU’s that you the taxpayer have to repay plus interest.
And, Medicare is in even worse shape.
Medicare trustees project that its “trust” will be depleted by 2019. the Associated Press reports that, “the looming Medicare shortage is seven times the size of the one that Social Security faces and nearly four times the entire federal debt.”
How did this happen?
So you thought that your payroll tax receipts were stashed in “trust” funds earning interest towards your retirement needs?
You’re wrong.
You have been bamboozled by your elected officials for decades.
As fast as you have been paying into these “trust” funds, your elected officials have been pilfering your money and spending it for other “needs”...like promising giveaways we can’t afford to get elected/reelected.
In place of your payroll tax contributions, the government substitutes special obligation nonmarketable bonds (IOU’s) and these become Intragovernmental Holdings.
That’s correct...you now have the privilege of repaying your own money plus its annual interest.
And you wondered why Moody’s is in no mood to sanction this legal Ponzi scheme any longer.
So, with FDR’s and LBJ’s failed schemes sinking $trillions into the red, Liberal politicians come to the rescue with national healthcare and more unkeepable promises...promise anything for a chance to ride in Air Force One.
Funny how the taxpayer gets screwed every time a politician “promises” a free lunch.
Just trust me.
Hillary stated that her national healthcare plan will only cost $110 billion per year (which is a gross underestimate) which can easily be paid by raising taxes on people with incomes over $250,000 and from $56 billion in costs savings. Harvard business school professor Regina Herzlinger thinks that, “Claiming that she (Hillary) can save $56 billion through the marvelous efficiency of the U.S. government is just absurd.”
And I tend to agree.
But, a good way to keep the costs of national healthcare down is passive euthanasia of the sick and elderly. Hitler knew this cost-cutting method.
I know, I know...something like that couldn’t happen in a civilized nation. But, consider the case of Great Britain’s national healthcare system.
On the other side of the pond, “Doctors are calling for NHS (National Health Service) treatment to be withheld from patients who are too old or who lead unhealthy lives...Smokers, heavy drinkers, the obese and the elderly should be barred from receiving some operations, according to doctors, with most saying the health service cannot afford to provide free care to everyone.”
Smokers, drinkers, the obese and the elderly? My God...Teddy Kennedy would be the first to go.
Do you really want government bureaucrats setting your healthcare standards for the small price of the U.S. economy and your life? Maybe you would also like the government to ration gasoline.
It’s not as though Peter Orszag, head of the “nonpartisan” Congressional Budget Office doesn’t have a cost-cutting solution, “...significant savings may be possible by (the government bureaucrats) better targeting payments to more cost-effective medical treatments (in their opinion).” Could that “more cost-effective medical treatment” be passive euthanasia?
With the failed policies of Social Security and Medicare, does the U.S. really need another Rube Goldberg program called national healthcare?
With the viability of the U.S. economy already threatened by the gross political mismanagement of Social Security and Medicare do we really need to drive the final stake of national healthcare through our economic heart?
Wouldn’t that be as stupid as throwing gasoline on a fire?
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