Published: November 04, 2009 11:31 pm      

Prescriptions we need

To the editor:

This is a response to Mr. Jaco’s letter about taxpayer-funded health care.

That’s nice that your family has been so well cared for by Medicare, etc. However, we should look at the realities of expanding or even continuing such programs — yes, health care must be paid for — but the idea of taxpayers footing the bill is a rather new one — only a few decades old. The consequences of such programs are unfunded liabilities that our country has no way to pay for, to the tune of 60-plus/minus trillion dollars. That means we’ve obligated ourselves to that as a future debt, promise to provide and pay for services we can’t afford.

Whatever happened to personal responsibility, the free market and real charity? I’ll tell you what’s happened to it — the federal and state governments came in and gradually took over just about every aspect of our lives. We look to big brother or nanny state instead of the person in the mirror.

The more government has entangled itself in health care, the more the costs have risen and efficiency and quality have gone down. What has government ever taken control of that has improved?

Why am I, an uninsured person, paying for the health care of everyone else? Through corporations and businesses passing their expenses to consumers (me) and government passing the program’s costs to taxpayers (me), I pay for others’ care and cannot afford my own. There is something wrong with this picture. And, no, the answer isn’t for me to get in line for Medicaid (which I’m sure our family would qualify for, but we wouldn’t dream of asking others to pay for something that is our responsibility!).

Health care choices should be left to the individual. No one should be forced — yes — forced to pay for someone else’s personal choices or consequences from those choices.

Imagine how much more we’d have in our pockets if we weren’t forced to subsidize – with everything we buy and taxed on every dime we earn — the care of others.

We could afford our own insurance if we chose to, whatever level we decided and from whatever provider we wanted. Like buying auto or home insurance. Insurance should cover the major catastrophes in life. Every sniffle, flat tire, routine oil change or burned-out light bulb shouldn’t be paid for by insurance.

Then we’d also have more money in our pockets to help the truly needy with charity. Which should be in the hands of community and churches, not the government.

We need to get back to taking care of ourselves — we do a much better job.

The trillions in promised future benefits is unsustainable. We must work toward removing government all together from those areas of life not authorized by the constitution and not impose further burdens of debt on our people — such burdens will be borne by children not yet born!

Like Melody Brunson’s op-ed about changing buying habits and Ms. Ead’s’ letters about helping one another. We must start being more responsible for self, family and neighbors. And strengthen our churches and communities.

Our debt-based economy will continue to come crashing down. We’ve been plundered by Austin, Washington, Wall Street, and the Federal Reserve (as well as the international bankers). And the looting hasn’t stopped. You think the dollar losing 95 percent of its purchasing power in the last 90 years is bad, just wait until the inflation which will result from the recent printing of trillions more in monopoly money comes home to roost. We will be the ones to pick up the pieces; we cannot look to the ones who’ve done this to us to take care of us.

This will mean a paradigm shift. Back 100 years or more would be a good place to start. Before the Federal Reserve banking system, before the AMA censuring alternatives to health care, before socialism and fascism, before U.S. global empire-building, before federal indoctrination institutions (government-controlled public schools), before the propaganda machines run by a few corporations.

It’s not left vs. right, folks, it’s tyranny vs. the people.

Personal responsibility and local control are the prescriptions we need.

Debbie McKee

Campbell