Comments on: Updated: Big Daddy Dodges Questions About Healthcare Diktat

By: Myron Pauli

Myron Pauli — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 13:04:16 +0000

On Robert’s comment:

In a free market, we would not have guaranteed “free” emergency room treatment to everyone – including aliens. We would have lower cost nurse practicioners and PA’s in clinics seeing the poor for routine stuff.
But the state has regulated itself into a “mess” of its own creation.

By: Robert Glisson

Robert Glisson — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:06:48 +0000

This has little if any reference to taxes but I had the opportunity to observe the local Emergency room in operation last night, Mon 9-21-09, about 7:30. A friend had heart pains- I took her to the E-room. They took one look and she was in ‘trauma’ at once. At 11:15 a woman, very pregnant came in, a minute’s consolation and she was being wheeled into Diagnostic Imaging. We left at 11:30. During the four hours I was there, moms and their teenage sons and daughters drifted in and out, the televisions stayed on the Disney Channel. I changed one to the USA Channel, but that lasted maybe five minutes before it went back to Disney, no one watched television though, they played with their phones almost constantly or visited like in the school hallway. The medical personnel did their job well and with a good attitude. Other than the two persons mentioned at the beginning of this comment, I saw no emergency, just the hospital being used as a regular doctor’s office. There is this strong desire to join a TEA Party.

By: M. B. Moon

M. B. Moon — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 20:52:23 +0000

“The Land of Liberty”? I would like to see a tabular comparison of the US versus other countries. Also, the US today versus 1900. Liberty? What does that word even mean anymore in the US when 1/2 of GDP is consumed by government busy-bodies? I expect far more liberty after I’m dead.

There must be a law of “conservation of tyranny” at work since the fall of Communism has done US no good.

By: Bob Harrison

Bob Harrison — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:04:57 +0000

Forcing small businesses to provide health care or pay $8,000 per employee sounds like it will help them so much! These are the same small businesses that Democrats constantly villainize as “the rich” who aren’t paying their “fair share.” I guess we won’t have “social justice” till the top 10% pay ALL the taxes eh?

By: Myron Pauli

Myron Pauli — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 21:15:17 +0000

One concession that I make to the Big Man is that our current welfare state already does TAX people for emergency rooms for so-called “loafers” so instead we will “MANDATE” the subsidized coverage – e.g. I concede that taxing the right pocket instead of the left pocket is not an “increase” per se over the current welfare state. In scientific terms, there is no “tax increase” in what would be called the “first order terms”.

I looked at the Baucus bill and the Adobe acrobat software counted the nonexistent word TAX only 268 times in the document.

Klein is also correct. The net tax increase comes in the “higher order terms”:

(1) A bureaucracy needed to enforce all these mandates and manage 3 billion medical decisions/year costs money

(2) Making something “free” will guarantee more use of it (e.g. doctors’ visits by people with minor aches and cuts, for example)

(3) Making something guaranteed as a “right” will also serve as a mechanism for more lawsuits, court-ordered coverage, etc.

(4) Making something guaranteed and easy to obtain serves as a magnet for aliens to come here for complex medical operations not guaranteed elsewhere

And our LIBERTY disappears as a result!