Why we don't want universal healthcare...

I was able to experience Socialized healthcare firsthand today. I could have paid $15 a pop to get flu shots for our family at our family doctor. Instead, I decided to be a tightwad and get the free flu shots that the government was giving out today.

I sat in line in my car for two and a half hours with four very unhappy children.

It was miserable to put it mildly. My only thought was that this could be, in the foreseeable future, our only option for healthcare. This time it was my choice.

If the United States adopts a universal health care system, waiting will be the name of the game.

Here are a few examples:

Mark Cannon, 30, from the United Kingdom died eight and a half weeks after being admitted to the hospital with a broken leg. He was clearly distressed and in pain, but he had to wait three days to see the pain team.

Lindsay McCreith, 66, from Canada was told he had a brain tumor but that he would have to wait four and a half months to obtain an MRI to rule out the possibility that it was cancerous. Unwilling to risk the progression of what might be cancer, Mr. McCreith obtained an MRI in Buffalo, which revealed the tumor was malignant. Even with this diagnosis in hand, the Ontario system still refused to provide timely treatment, so Mr. McCreith had surgery in Buffalo to remove the cancerous brain tumor in March, 2006. In Ontario, Mr. McCreith would have waited eight months for surgery, according to his family doctor. Eight months is enough time for a cancer to worsen, spread and progress to an irreversible stage. Had Mr. McCreith not paid $26,600 for immediate care, he might be dead today.

Jordan Johanson, 18, from Canada died at Rockyview Hospital in late March. He died following a 12-hour wait for surgery on his appendix.

Sheila Nunn, A woman from Canada suffering seizures, was told by her doctor that she urgently needed an MRI scan. She was also told she would have to wait three months to have it done locally. Nunn, who had been suffering blackouts, memory loss, confusion and seizures for two months, decided to take action: She paid $1,100 to have the MRI scan done in Michigan.

Gerald Carroll, 46, of Australia had chemotherapy for tumors in his jaw and behind his eye. After that treatment, he had a three-month wait for radiotherapy. “But in the three months it took to get the stereotactic radiotherapy I needed, the tumor had grown too large to treat,” Mr. Carroll said. “The radiotherapist referred me back to my oncologist. I’ve been on chemo since February and now’s it’s reduced the tumor to a point where I can have the radiation. I’m on the waiting list for stereotactic radiosurgery at this time.”

With socialized medicine, doctors will have little incentive to strive to be good at what they do. They will be government employees and have far less accountability, as well as lower pay. Could we still expect the best and brightest to strive to be doctors? Probably not.

Many on the left love to complain that the United States is one of the few industrialized nations without a government health care system. Yet they rarely note that the United States produces disproportional amounts of the new, life-saving drugs, largely because of the profits drug companies make. Will we continue to produce these drugs if we abolish the profit motive? Not likely. Chances are, they will not be produced at all, and more people will needlessly suffer and die as a result.

When we examine countries that have embraced socialized medicine, we find long waits, expansive red tape and little concern for the individual. Do you really want to be told which doctor to go to? Do you want to wait years to have necessary medical procedures performed? If so, then socialized medicine is for you.

Not for me.

In fact, I don’t particularly like ANY kind of socialism!

Let’s define socialism really quickly, because I know there are some of you that are thinking “Aubrey’s being dramatic again...we'll never have socialism.” I will turn to Wikipedia for a definition:

“Socialism refers to a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating state or collective ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods”

“Socialists mainly share the belief that capitalism unfairly concentrates power and wealth among a small segment of society that controls capital and creates an unequal society. All socialists advocate the creation of an egalitarian society, in which wealth and power are distributed more evenly”

"Some socialists advocate complete nationalization of the means of production, distribution, and exchange; while others advocate state control of capital within the framework of a market economy. Social democrats propose selective nationalization of key national industries in mixed economies combined with tax-funded welfare programs.”

Think Fannie and Freddie and the whole bank bailout.

I am not saying that I think Obama is the one behind all of this. This has been a long lime coming. Our country creeps closer and closer to socialism everyday. My fear is that now we aren’t creeping…we’re sprinting.

I am trying to post a YouTube video of Ezra Taft Benson. He was President Eisenhower’s Secretary of Agriculture. He gave us a warning 50 years ago about socialism. I hope you will go to this link and hear it directly from Secretary Benson’s mouth, because I can’t get it to post!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKFloXeBIwo#

He spoke with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and this is a quote from their exchange:

“You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept communism outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism. We won’t have to fight you. We’ll so weaken your economy until you’ll fall like overripe fruit into our hands!”

I’m afraid Khrushchev has been proven right.

A Dark Day

I didn’t sleep very well last night. I may not sleep well for the next four years. I couldn’t shake the stress and worry as I tossed and turned all night. In one dream that I remember, I went to the ATM to get money. Instead of the usual screen, there was just Barack Obama’s face laughing it me. Hilarious that I would want to access my own money.

Today I will start looking for a contractor to build a false wall somewhere in my house. I want a stash of food and money that the government can’t find. I’m contemplating buying a gun to hide in there. Don’t take the right to bear arms for granted. The Constitution means nothing now.

How about the freedom of speech? That one won’t hang around long.

But the liberals love their freedom of speech, right?

Only when you’re speaking the right things. One of the first things on the agenda is to get rid of talk radio. Talk radio is the only place that conservatives can get news that isn’t filtered by people like Keith Olbermann. The television news, magazines and newspapers are overwhelmingly liberal.

But the Democrats insist that talk radio isn’t fair because it’s too conservative. The Fairness Doctrine would mean that radio broadcasts have to be split fairly between conservative and liberal views. Liberal talk radio has been tried, and nobody listens. Why would they? If you want liberal news, you can turn on any channel. The First Amendment means now means nothing. The Democrats have been chomping at the bit for this, and now they will get their chance.

Even more scary is Obama’s 250,000 person “civilian force” that's going to be just as strong, just as powerful and just as well funded as the U.S. military. No, I am not making this up. This is really his plan.

Let’s go back in history to when Wilson was president. The Sedition Act was passed. This imposed prison terms of up to 20 years and fines of up to $10,000 for "all forms of expression in any way critical of the government.” The Justice Department turned over the enforcement of that act to the citizen "loyalty leagues". Sounds kind of like a “civilian force” to me.

There was a huge media campaign where people were asked to anonymously turn in anyone critical of the administration to the Justice Department. By January 1920, they had organized the largest mass arrests in U.S. history, rounding up at least 10,000 individuals.

Obama plans to cut the funding of the military in half to fund his little civilian force. I feel safe, don’t you? I can just see a bunch of people running around wearing a red armband with a big “O” on it.

My biggest concern is that since so much of the military funding will go to the Obama Loyalty League, our country will not be protected. We have been so blessed with safety since the September 11 attacks.

I think a lot of people take that for granted.

I will be praying everyday that when the next attacks occur, and they will, that the target will not be the headquarters of the world’s largest retailer.

I plan to keep this blog going as long as I can…until the people with the armbands come for me.

My Final Plea

The election is tomorrow. Many of you may have voted early, but if you know me, you know I have not. I love Election Day; it’s like a holiday.

The liberal media has worked hard to get Barak Obama elected, and they are working even harder in the final days to make us believe that this election is over, and Obama has it won by a landslide.

Don’t believe it.

Don’t let the media dictate what you think. This election is not over.

Yes, I am aware of the hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes for the Democrats. This will be very hard to overcome. The Obama campaign has insisted that all claims of voter fraud should be investigated after the election. They have written to the Attorney General and insisted that it is the people who discovered and reported the fraud that should be investigated. In one of the letters the Obama campaign states that the attempt to uncover the fraud is an effort to “harass voters and impede their exercise of their rights.” Seriously?

Ohio is a critical state. There have been several instances of people registering and voting on the same day (thankfully most states have better voter protection laws). Unfortunately, they registered and voted with somebody else’s address. They catch a few of these, but thousands get through- enough to swing an election.

But I don’t despair, because this is not over.

Obama is very smart. He only pushes as far as he thinks the electorate will let him. People say “he’s only for universal healthcare for kids”. Yeah…for now. If he is able to get that thorough, he will certainly move on to the entire population. Universal healthcare for kids failed in Hawaii after only 7 months. Everyone was dropping their private healthcare- duh! So they had to get rid of it.

Universal healthcare sounds good. Change sounds good. Helping minorities and poor people buy houses sounded good. It is the same thing. It is the government thinking that they can run our lives better than we can. Did it really help those people to get into a house, only to lose the house and be left with ruined credit?

I would like to give just one reason not to vote for Obama (I have hundreds, but here is the most important)

Please, please, please don’t vote for Obama because you think he will be good for the economy or lower your taxes. If you have other reasons why you think he is the best choice, that is your prerogative. But if your choice is based on the economy, you MUST reconsider.

Here are a couple of quotes from President Clinton:

"We will lower the tax burden on middle class Americans by asking the very wealthy to pay their fair share. Middle class taxpayers will have a choice between a children's tax credit or a significant reduction in their income tax rate." [Putting People First, September 1992.]

On October 19, 1992 he said, "I will not raise taxes on the middle class to pay for these programs. If the money does not come in there to pay for these programs, we will cut other government spending or we will slow down the phase-in of these programs. I am not gonna raise taxes on the middle class to pay for these programs."

On Aug. 10, 1993, he signed the LARGEST TAX INCREASE IN HISTORY, raising taxes by almost $280 billion over five years.

Now I’m not saying Obama is Clinton. I’m just asking you to think about it. Use your own brain; don’t regurgitate what you hear on the news.

Ask yourself if Obama can really institute all of his new programs and give us all a tax cut.

The first thing he would do is let the Bush tax cuts expire. Then he will tell us that this isn’t really a tax increase, the cuts are just expiring. Bottom line is that my taxes will go up and so will yours (most of you…unless you are that lucky bottom 40% who will be getting a check).

The other way that Obama will kill the economy is through the Card Check Bill. I am willing to bet money that most of you haven’t even heard of this. It’s not something the liberal media wants you to know about. (Do you ever get frustrated that the media controls what information the public gets?)

Anyway, the Card Check Bill has to do with unions. The current policy is that if workers want to unionize, there is a secret ballot. The Democrats and Barack Obama want to take away the secret ballot so that workers don’t get a chance to vote. They will be able to go to workers’ houses and intimidate them into signing a card. If they get half of the workers to sign…poof…they’re unionized. Small businesses will have unions telling them how to run their business, they will have to hire labor lawyers, and their costs will skyrocket.

The really crazy thing is that this is an exact parallel of the Great Depression. The key negative component to deepening the depression was the massive increase in unionization, from 13 percent of the workforce in 1935 to 29 percent in 1939. The coordinated raising of prices by businesses that Franklin Roosevelt allowed after unions organized an industry also played a role in deepening the Depression.

Not only will the Card Check Bill deny employees the right to a private vote, it will lead to a surge in labor costs and reduction in competitiveness for U.S. companies at just the wrong time.

I am positive that Obama policies will be bad for our economy. Don’t vote for what sounds good. Vote for what is good.