Wednesday, July 22, 2009

The Crisis in Health Care

Let me tell you how the conservatives have lost the debate on health care and most of them don't even know it.

I listen to talk radio every day. Talk radio is dominated by the right in this country because the audience for talk radio is naturally on the right--traditional working people who keep up with the world. Lefties have other media that they use to get out their opinions, chiefly traditional news sources and government sponsored media such as National Public Radio.

As an aside, the content of NPR is so dreadfully inane and boring that it would never survive if it had to depend on things like listeners and sponsors--you know, actually make it in the real world.

Dennis Miller says that lefties do not do well getting a radio audience because no one wants to tune in and listen to how bad they are and how they are to blame for all of the world's problems. I'm not sure how accurate Miller's assessment is, but I find it amusing.

As I was saying, I listen to talk radio and by far the dominant theme this week has been Obama-Care. I listen to the conservative pundits denounce and expose the evils of socialized medicine and I listen to leftist callers as they argue the Democrat talking points on the matter. I know both sides of the issue and am adamantly opposed to socialized medicine both on principle and for pragmatic reasons.

But the conservatives have lost this debate and the Republicans, typically, are back on their heels trying to stop the Obama/Pelosi juggernaut and offering their own alternative plans to fix the health care crisis.


And that is exactly where conservatives have lost this debate. They have conceded the premise of the opposition, a premise which is false.

There is no health care crisis in America.

I'm sorry, but there just isn't, and anybody with any sense of reality should know that. Are there problems with our health care system? Certainly. Are people dying in the streets? Certainly not. But you wouldn't know that by listening to the left.

We have the best, most effective, most innovative health care system in the world. We have the best hospitals, doctors, nurses, and research facilities. We are the healthiest people who have ever lived in the history of mankind.

And we have a health care crisis?

The typical leftist response to my assertions would be to point out the problems we have. But I don't deny there are problems. I only deny that a crisis exists. But to listen to Washington and the main-stream media you would think the whole thing is about to collapse and we had better act now, right now, before it is eternally too late to save it.

Horse manure.

But conservatives have lost the debate on health care reform because they have conceded the premise beneath which it lies. And, thus, we are poised to destroy the best health care system in the world.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I guess it depends on what you mean by the word crisis. All the wonderful things you say about our health care system are true, but it is also true that rising costs are out of control and will create a growing financial burden . I would say it is at this point in time that if we don't fix the problems our current health care system will become the most expensive health care system in the world.

Tom Sawyer said...

While what you say about rising costs is true, there is time to research causes and discuss solutions. The whole system is not about to go over the cliff and into the abyss, as one might think if he listened exclusively to the rhetoric coming out of Washington. Certainly there is no need to pass an unread, massive bill before August recess as the Dems are attempting to do in the House. This is a scare tactic. Drum up a crisis, scare people, pass massive government regulation.

Anonymous said...

I agree, but this would require reasonable people to come together and work out a reasonable solution to the problem. When has that ever happened? To espouse the freedoms we have as Americans vs the liberal version of America is most effective in opening the eyes of the blind.

Tom Sawyer said...

Let us hope, my friend, that this massive encroachment on liberty does not pass and become law. If it does, then let us hope the states will stand up to it and defy it. To me, this is the most serious attack on our liberties that has ever taken place in this country. We are about to cross a one-way bridge and I do not want to tell my grandkids of an America that was once free.

Tom Sawyer said...

What is easy to miss in all of this is the mindset that brings it on--which is this . . . if there is a problem anywhere, Washington must solve it.

That is the midnset of our society. Maybe I should post something on the main page about this. It blows me away that we (and all of us do this to some extent) always seem to look to Washington as if her purpose is to solve all of society's ills. That is not the purpose of government, certainly not our federal government under the Constitution.

Yes, there is a problem with health care costs, but Washington has been and still is the problem, not the solution. To solve it, you get government out of it, then do what government is supposed to do, exercise authority to bring about justice by passing tort reform which will prevent lawsuit abuse and bring down malpractice insurance costs. You start with that. Get government out, give justice to the oppressed by stopping the profiteering of the trial lawyers.

Believe me, if this were a free market helath care system it would not be priced too high for the consumers to access it. Right now, because of government meddling, something other than consumer demand is driving up the costs.

Anonymous said...

OK, so we're talking about changing the mindset of the people. You want to convince people that big government is bad and that we the people can solve our own problems with out government interference. We could start by educating people about the constitution, what it actually says and means to us collectively and individually. The true meaning of the constitution seems lost to the average american. They don't understand the spirit behind it, that it's about protecting there freedom. Perhaps the modern american is more concerned about loosing there comfort than they are about loosing there freedom. We could make it a required course in our government run schools. While we're at it we can require the history taught our children to be accurate as to why we are a great nation as apposed to why we must apologize to the world for all the injustice we've caused. If this knowledge is implanted into the minds of our youth, it will insure the future of a free america akin to the one our founding fathers had in mind. Government control is the antithesis of freedom.