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.