There’s a tendency among the Right to bash government programs. We often hear accusations such as:
“Medicare is a failure”
The goal of Medicare is to provide healthcare services to the elderly and other selected groups. It does this – a recent survey of Medicare recipients (discussed on NPR) found that most of them are satisfied with their health coverage overall. Thus Medicare is succeeding in its mission. It’s inefficient, big and expensive – but in this it differs little from the private insurance cartels.
“The minimum wage never worked and neither did unions”
Why do we have a minimum wage? The natural tendency of employers is to pay workers as little as the market will allow. History shows that “employers” are not averse to paying workers nothing (called slavery or serfdom) or next to nothing (as we see even now in some Asian, South and Central American and Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi situations) if they can get away with it. People must work and there are plenty of people available. All the cards are in employers’ hands unless there is a minimum wage law and preferably also worker organization (unions). Unions exist to balance the scales of power that historically and undeniably favor the rich and powerful. Unregulated market forces will continuously drive wages down. Then poor people will need a second job just to make ends meet… . etc. We’ve all seen this happen, even in the US, over the last 30 years. Who’d have thought?It’s time we all learned that “free market Capitalism” is not ethical enough, mature enough or compassionate enough to be used as a model to run a country because it assumes that businesses have ethical standards they don’t have, that they have goals other than the accumulation of wealth (greed), that their increasing wealth will benefit the whole of society. Recent history has shown us what the “left” has always known – it doesn’t work that way.
“The government can’t be trusted to run anything”
The government both represents and reflects the voters. President Eisenhower warned us all that government has gotten into bed with the military-industrial complex. Now he would probably describe it as the military-industrial-media complex and it certainly runs things to the satisfaction of many industries, banks and media moguls; looking after their interests very nicely indeed. Why else do we have a ridiculous, impenetrable tax code and a wasteful, inefficient, ineffective and unfair healthcare system that despite costing more than any other system on Earth ranks 37th in terms of quality? But that cynical interpretation is not the one implied by the accusation. It implies (usually) that the government is too stupid to run a single payer healthcare system. This is not strictly true: the government manages to run the military and the police through their respective departments so “yes, they can” run healthcare, if the will is there. The will simply isn’t there – most of the 20 top quality healthcare systems in the world are run totally or primarily by national governments so “government” per se is capable of running healthcare – except, uniquely, in America. Now I wonder why that is? President Eisenhower gave us the answer decades ago.
– R. Shortall
This article appears in Aug 13-19, 2009.
MAKE LOCAL JOURNALISM HAPPEN
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Mr. Shortall,
I am sure you will get many comments on your ludicrous letter, and here are mine.
Medicare is such a success that it is going to go broke in 2017. It is such a success that people who are on it qualify for food stamps, low income housing, etc. It is uch a success that many lose their own homes to pay for the 20% costs that medicare does not cover. It is such a success that if one does not pay an additional 200 to 300 dollars a month to buy supplemental insurance, prescription drug coverage, or something similar, they do not have full coverage. And medicare does not even cover dental, and several other conditions. And, since you are in the “health care” business I am sure you know what percentage of doctors will not even take medicare, medicaid, or Oregon Health Plan, members.
And then the left whines that the Republicans do not have any alternatives which is a lie. How about health savings accounts, tort reform, allowing more competition by allowing a person to shop across State lines for a policy? Currently Oregon is one of the highest premiums in the country. Why is that? Because it has the most assinine mandates for one to buy insurance. Why should a 60 year old woman be required to pay for pregnancy insurance as one example? Because the Democrats that control the State have said she is required to do so.
What has the minimum wage done? All it has done is allow employers to pay the smallest amount possible for the labor they receive. It has also allowed corrupt unions to take from the employee that which they have not earned to make millionaires out of the union bosses. Do you really think the employer is not going to pass on the added expense to the customer? Are you that foolish? If it is such a great deal why has not the wages of the American worker kept up with inflation? Why does Oregon have one of the highest unemployment rates in the US while having one of the highest minimum wages? Because there are no unions? Get real. Each time a worker goes on strike for higher wages it takes 2 years for them to gain back what they have lost from the time off work. And who is it that really profits from it?
As for this great military complex, what is the percentage of the GDP that goes to the military, and then what is the percentage that goes to social programs? Do you think for one minute that the problem might be in the waste, and fraud, within these programs like Medicare, or food stamps? Do you ever think that the stifling size of the bureaucracy that is created might be another reason?
It is time for the left to grow up, face the problems they have created, and let the adults take control for a while.
BTW, which health care system would you rather have. The one where 77% of women survive breast cancer, or the one where 56% survive? The one where a person can get a hip replacement within 6 months, or the one where you have to wait 3 years?
I know, I know!!!
I’d like the health system that’s ranked number 1 in the world rather than the one we have that’s ranked 37th …. ha ha.
“It is time for the left to grow up, face the problems they have created, and let the adults take control for a while”
Bbrrruuuuuaaaahahahahah splutter…. “the adults” – would they be the “adults” who were in control since 2000? Oh, Swipies, thanks for the laughs!
Party Pooper,
Again with the snide comments, and no facts to support your beligerent attitude.
Perhaps you might be interested in reading this article which explains how the WHO scores rankings. That is if you aren’t afraid of the truth, or losing more of your beliefs.
http://www.fee.org/pdf/the-freeman/1107Peron.pdf
According to Susan Eisenhower, the President’s granddaughter, the original text read ‘military-industrial-congressional complex.’ He changed it because it was not the politically expedient thing to do. He was referring to the fact that spreading military-spending dependent jobs throughout the United States had resulted in a blank check mentality on the part of the elected representatives who would never vote against a military project if the jobs of voters in their districts depended on it. Currently, the pentagon does NOT want any more F-22 fighters–but Congress has ordered the production of more because of the jobs in their districts.
Swipies Neverland – The Never Ending Story
Mr Cramer, Steerpike and Mr Shortall: I feel sad for the likes of Swipies. Their America is not only gone and isn’t ever coming back… but it never existed in the first place – except that is in movies starring Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Jimmy Stewart, Greer Garson, John Wayne and Ward Bond… “oh, yes, but those WERE the days Shortall, Steerpike, Cramer and the Pooper!!! Why you’ve no idea how happy we all were in the Good Ol’ Days when everyone was white, oh, except the kitchen maid Aunt Jemimah, ha ha oh, she was a card and no doubt about it with her huge,happy girth and her loud laugh and her big poppy eyes (and her untreated diabetes!), and oh, boy ya didn’ want to mess with her on bakin’ days coz she’d take a switch to you as soon as look at you! But we were happy then, ya know … there were no librils bringin’ in their strange new ideas of equality, fraternity, pursuitin’ happiness and all that fuufaah, no ‘bortions cuz we loved ALL our babies made within marriage (and kept secret the ones as weren’t! ha ha), and we all had the same religion more or less, Christians one and all, as we exterminated the natives and nigh on wiped out many of the beasts of this Wonderful Country!!!! And the president, the Congress and the Senate were all to a man, to a MAN, white, middle class (or better preferably ha ha) and looked just like Uncle Philbert!!! Oh, youse guys don’t know the half of it! And sure there were foreigners but not like “today”… foreigners back then kind of knew their place, ifn’ ya get my drift, they didn’t get all uppidy, ya know!… ha ha… they WERE funny with their funny little accents and their little immigrant jobs – a fair day’s work for a fair hour’s pay as my daddy used to say: “why if’n ya pay them too much they’ll be able to take a day off, and then who’ll do the yardwork?” Ha ha, sweet ol’ daddy. If it weren’t fur “today’s librils” this country would be just as if was back then (insert fantasised date here)when children could work in factories if they liked, women were chattels of men, we even had SLAVES whoooooo hoooooo, boy did we have hookey with them!!! – a woman would be lucky if half her children lived long enough to be sent off to some stupid war to die for the rich and hardly anyone got older than 70 because we kept gettin’ epidemix and the like… oh, yes, dem wuz de days”
Stephen Cramer says,
According to Susan Eisenhower, the President’s granddaughter, the original text read ‘military-industrial-congressional complex.’ He changed it because it was not the politically expedient thing to do. He was referring to the fact that spreading military-spending dependent jobs throughout the United States had resulted in a blank check mentality on the part of the elected representatives who would never vote against a military project if the jobs of voters in their districts depended on it. Currently, the pentagon does NOT want any more F-22 fighters–but Congress has ordered the production of more because of the jobs in their districts.”
Surely you are not suggesting that Eisenhower was a “politician”?
Walter Williams once pointed out the sentiments of the Founders:
“James Madison, the father of our Constitution, explained, “If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions.” He later added, “With respect to the two words ‘general welfare,’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.”
Thomas Jefferson said, “Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.”