Friends, the U.S. health care system is a maze of contradictions. Depending on who you ask, they'll tell you it's awesome and excellent, or abysmal and excruciating. Truth is, they'd both be right, because it's a multi-headed hydra, to say the least. I don't pretend to know much of anything about American health care, especially the business side of it, but I do know one thing for sure: big government is NOT the answer to what ails the system. We've tried that time and time again, and, so far at least, expanding government funding and control has only made the structural, fundamental problems worse. Fortunately, with the victory of DJT, we don't have to worry about being forced into a single-payer system, or "Medicare-for-All". The solutions that Trump and Republicans are likely to pursue are market-oriented, and that gives me hope. What gives me even more hope is the actions of men like Elon Musk and RFK, Jr., who want to uncouple government policy from corporate financial interests. Anyway, the subject of health care is the focus of my latest article, as you can see here:
Don't Believe the Left's Crocodile Tears for UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson
Starstruck adulation is the last response you would expect rational, compassionate people to give to the acts of a cold-blooded killer, but such is the twisted state of American political discourse that many otherwise intelligent and decent people have expressed admiration for, and even approval of, the gunning down of health insurance executive Brian Thompson. The perpetrator, as by now everyone knows, was the privileged youth Luigi Mangione, who felt that, based on his own struggles with America's health care system, he was entitled to deprive Mr. Thompson of his life. The fact that Mangione is conventionally handsome, and the fact that private health insurance company executives are presumptively diabolical, has led a distressing number of progressives to conclude that, in fact, Mangione's slaying of Thompson was a righteous deed.
Wendell Potter, a former health insurance executive himself, and a convert to the cause of abolishing private insurance and promoting government-run health care instead, is not among those who lionize Luigi Mangione. In fact, in his latest New York Times op-ed, Potter is at pains to describe Thompson's death as “tragic” and “horrific”. What Potter and the Times are not above, however, is exploiting the media sensation surrounding this execution-style killing in order to shine a bright and unflattering light on the health insurance industry, which was, of course, Mangione's real target in the first place. Neat trick, that! No wonder Potter has been praised by left-wing icons like Michael Moore and Bernie Sanders. His zeal is commendable, even if his timing is obscene.
And what is the goal of people like Wendell Potter, health care analyst extraordinaire, and of leftist media organizations like the New York Times? It is, as it has always been, to abolish private health insurance. It is to maximize government funding and government oversight with respect to all forms of health care, with an eye to creating a single-payer system and/or extending Medicare or Medicaid coverage to all Americans, such that private insurance companies would wither away. The premise, as always, is that government-provided or public health care is inherently better and more equitable than capitalist health care. Let's be more like Cuba, these brainiacs keep telling us, where every conceivable medical treatment is provided free of charge, and no one ever grows sick and dies (more or less)!
Now, is the American health care system perfect? No, not by a long shot. It is, as almost everyone agrees, way too expensive, bureaucratic, and reactive rather than preventive. Be that as it may, the advocates of greater government funding and control, like Mr. Potter, have been selling us the same bill of goods for decades now, and the one thing we can say for sure is that, whatever the ills of American health care may be, these crypto-socialists don't have the answer.
Consider that Wendell Potter, like almost all health care advocates beloved of the editorial board of the New York Times, was a big supporter of Obamacare, a.k.a. the Affordable Care Act of 2010. Well, did Obamacare fix the high cost of American health care? Did it eliminate high deductibles and medical bankruptcies, which so offend Mr. Potter? Did it clamp down on health insurance company profits? No, no, and no! Indeed, the expansion of government funding and control that Obamacare embodied, while it may have improved access for some, solved none of the fundamental problems of our health care system, and it appears to have worsened many of them. And that fact only confirms what we have known ever since the 1960s: the steady expansion of government funding for, and control over, health care has been matched by a steady increase in the cost of such care, and declining public confidence in the fairness and effectiveness of the American medical system overall. In other words, in so many ways, more government has not proved to be the solution to the problem – it has become the problem. This is a fact which men like Mr. Potter seem incapable of grasping.
The good news, however, is that, with both houses of Congress now in Republican hands, and with Donald J. Trump returning to the White House, the Left's and the establishment's long-cherished dream of socialized medicine in the USA is and will remain just that: a dream. In fact, single-payer health insurance and “Medicare-for-All” are arguably more distant prospects now that at any time in recent memory. Thank heavens for that!
At the end of the day, America's mostly private health care system still works, in many ways better than any other system in the world. What works even better, historically speaking, are capitalism and competition, and here's hoping that, under Trump, we will get more, not less, of both!
Dr. Nicholas L. Waddy is an Associate Professor of History at SUNY Alfred and blogs at: www.waddyisright.com. He appears on the Newsmakers show on WLEA/WYSL.
And here it is at World Net Daily:
https://www.wnd.com/2025/01/dont-believe-the-lefts-crocodile-tears-for-health-care-ceo/
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P.S. Here's a great article about what Javier Milei has been able to accomplish in Argentina. This is one of the few examples in modern history of a government getting smaller, so we ought to sit up and take notice!
DONALD J. TRUMP IS OFFICIALLY A CONVICTED FELON! NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW IN THIS COUNTRY!
ReplyDeleteRod
Hi Rod,
DeleteYes, but he is still going to be The President of The United States
isn't he? Have a nice day, asshole!
Hi Again Rod,
DeleteI almost forgot, but you still need to consider Seppuku before Trump takes office. It's an honorable way to resist, and I would be delighted to be the one performing the beheading part. Think about this.
There are serious costs to Milei's austerity program. Unemployment is 8% and poverty soared to 53%. Beyond that, Milei's success in knocking down inflation may not hold. Having stricter controls on the almost logarithmic increase in the country's monetary supply was a necessary, but short term, fix. Moving from a dollarization to a pseudo-dollarization plan is likely not sustainable in the long run, perhaps not even as long as Milei's first term.
ReplyDeleteRod
Rod from Jack: DJT is no more a felon than was Dred Scott property. As DJT asserted , this was a shameful charade which disgraces and discredits NY state beyond measure. In our state's haughty disregard for the plainly expressed electoral will of America that "lawfare" be extinguished, NY has yet persisted. NY should be scornfully isolated in our Union.
ReplyDeleteBut it does serve a useful purpose, which is to remind us of the undiminished small minded vindictiveness of the antiamerican far left.
NY has cemented its pariahhood with this quasi Soviet outrage. Oh, so the "rule of law" is the indisputable, rock bottom, rationale offered by this professionally disgraced "judge"!? Well! Given the far left's widespread lawfare onslaught, such an assertion is laughable and the American electorate confirmed its disgust with it in Nov.
Let the amoral far left persist in this telling incipient totalitarian desperation. It will keep us motivated and hasten its own marginalization and consignment to the gutter!
Jack, your opinion is that the case was a shameful charade. The fact is that Trump is a convicted felon, and, if Roberts and Barrett have truly gotten back to looking at cases via a constitutional lens, Trump will remain a convicted felon.
DeleteRod
RAY TO JACK
DeleteRod is happy BECAUSE Trump was convicted. If the same thing happened to Biden he would be raising all kinds of stink. Rod hates Trump so much, that whatever Trump does is WRONG. Rod could care less if Trump's conviction was a travesty of justice, he is simply happy because Trump was hurt.
Talking to Rod about this (unless you agree with him) is a waste of your time, period. At least Rod is a consistent and predictable Leftist. For him, Trump is the enemy, and always will be.
When Trump dies, Rod will probably celebrate his death. Talking to Leftists is like talking to a fucking wall, and expecting to get an answer. Don't waste your time with Rod.
Dr. Waddy from Jack : Your essay is well argued.
ReplyDeleteWe need only look at Hillary's abortive "Health Security" plan to know what completely socialized health care would surely manifest. Eg. she wanted to order prospective Dr.s to specialize in fields selected for them by omnicients like her. She even wanted to tell them where to live. And this and other measures reflecting contempt for human nature and determination to reform it, were to be just the very, very beginning.
The "equity" fad had not yet started but it would certainly eventually have ensured that her "Health Security" would have correlated directly with one's membership either in a protected or a proscribed class.
Its worth my mentioning, as a Medicare recipient, that I am required to shell out for private supplementary insurance because Medicare is not comprehensive. So free enterprise is yet involved. No doubt that has attracted the basilisk gaze of the neomarxists and is directly in their cross hairs now.
Rod from Jack: I am not sure what reasoning Justices Roberts and Barrett used but we have a lawful Scotus now and I'm confident that their reasoning was plausible under the very much restricted circumstances .But to me it is inconceivable that they sought to endorse NY's execrable partisan misconduct.
ReplyDeleteI think the appeals process will follow a very predictable , automatic course of politically correct rejection as the People's Republic of NY strives to belabor it with procedural vexation. But once clear of such antiamerican humbug it will enter the Federal Courts and probably end up with Scotus. Once there it will be construed lawfully according to the principles expressed by the adversaries. Given the time that will involve and the consequent appropriateness of the setting, I am confident that Scotus will vacate this "conviction" and excoriate the lawlessness which engendered it.
Meanwhile DJT and his administration will bustle on with their promised agenda and will refuse to be intimidated by these amoral midget guerrillas . And America's anger toward antiamerica will deepen ever the more at their continued outrages. After all, 2028 is already in sight isn't it and the Dems do themselves great injury to carry on with that which got them routed.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: Most of those who celebrate the murder of Mr . Thompson are vicious little pots whose frivolous perverseness speaks for itself. Comments on Mangione's putative physical attractiveness as a redeeming factor are manifestations of sybaritic low life. Michael Moore continues to be a public grotesquerie. But I thought maybe Sanders had a badly wrongheaded yet perhaps well meaning aspect to his smoky Greenwich Village , fashionable Vermont emigre,neomarxism. But in taking any advantage of this hideous execution he gainsays any consideration of that type. Gads, he could have been the Dem nominee in 2016 until he got classically Clintoned. I think that until the dems party gets shut of their far left cadre and its incipient totalitarian motivators its going to continue down the slippery slope.
ReplyDeleteEither they will rend themselves assunder, with the radical remnant foundering Titanic like, after its encounter with the 2024 iceberg OR, it will again manifest one as dishonest as Slick Willy was in portraying the dems as chastened miscreants eager to make amends by repentedly reembracing American values.
Our outgoing NY State Assemblyman, a faithful representative of our overwhelmingly conservative majority in this God's country enclave we have here three hundred miles from the amoeba on the Hudson, coined an eloquent analogy in a validictory address. He termed our status as one of "a colony" of NYC lala land legislators and of an obsequious foolishly leftist enabler in our Governor. Their latest totalitarian dictate is to yet "lawfully" advance their already fantastically conceived effort to abolish the use of all fossil fuels in our "People's Republic" . It's sorta like Mao's insane "Great Leap Forward" with "backyard blast furnaces" as the core of an industrial onslaught summarily bettering the UK and putting the fear of Marx into all capitalists. Didn't work ,as 20 million Chinese as disserved by the tactic as to be starved could tell you if they were not in their graves. NY gov't can offer no evidence that its economy destroying campaign, conducted on top of perhaps the world's largest store of natural gas (relatively clean burning but not relatively perfect as is the future the far left promises us)will do any thing other than reduce NY to yet another pitiful Marxist sham. But we in the common sense upstate in NY are a colony and not a citizenry. My point? Keep the faith America, through the crucible ahead. This is what the far left still plans for America and much, much more!We've struck these Marxist-Leninist revivalists a staggering haymaker. Now lets follow through and put them on the canvas for good. They are counting on us to wilt. Let's show them how wrong they are now!
RAY TO JACK
ReplyDeleteThe "dems party" will NEVER go away. All that can be done (from the right), is to marginalize their agenda constantly, for starters.
Ray from Jack: There will probably always be two contending parties in our country but that need not include one of America hating, incipient totalitarian far left dreamers. A dem party TRULY shorn of these people could perhaps form a positive and constructive adversary. For the time being MAGA must resolve to destroy the party so very much unimaginably compromised by the commie dissemblers. It is that or be destroyed by them and the job of redemption is far from done.
ReplyDeleteIf the Dems ,as such they are now, go down the drain, a creditable opposition will find plenty of room in our polity. The only ones who want permanent one party rule are the Dem disguised neomarxists.
RAY TO JACK
DeleteThe Left vs Right has extended itself into the Christian Religion. In the last few years, the United Methodist Church (UMC), one of the largest Protestant denominations in the U.S., finally split over the LGBTQ issue, with a newly formed Global Methodist Church opposing LGBTQ.
Recently, the UMC Bishops sent out a letter specifically opposing Trump's Border Policies, and urging UMC members to resist Trump's other policies. They (the UMC Bishops) were very clear about this.
My point is, that Christians are "closing ranks" on political issues, and are, in fact, dividing into Left and Right Churches. This has probably been going on for longer than we think, and certainly before Biden, who as a Catholic, Biden's church is already against Trump's Border policies via The Pope.
So Jack, don't know who that "creditable opposition" is going to be, or when it is going to show up, but in the meantime, the two contending parties are implacable enemies. The gulf is going to get wider, and will end up with permanent on party rule anyway.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: The Hegseth hearings: here is the first big public fight of the antiwoke campaign . He has been unapologetically hostile to wokeism and its haughty disdain for common sense. He is particularly incensed by the casual far left use of our military for loony social finagling and in that, I think , is supported by a vast majority of those in our forces. He will of course be used savagely, after the fashion in which DJT's Scotus nominees were assaulted. Vicious self righteous dudgeon, fueled by the reflexive hatred which is characteristic of the far left whenever it is contradicted, will be on full display and help to confirm antiamerica's willingness to go down in flames rather than acknowledge the fantasy of its policies in this regard. Veteran dissembler Charles Schumer will preside over the onslaught.
ReplyDeleteRAY TO JACK
DeleteAs you know, the worst enemies any country can have are domestic, with Schumer as a good example. With that said, the idea that Republicans and Democrats can compromise anymore is a delusion on the right.
With that said, real Republicans need to be just as nasty as the enemy, at all times, with nastier as best. Look what the Left has done to Trump for eight years. I would also keep a jaundiced eye on people who pretend to be on the right, but in fact are infiltrators.
Rod, we congratulate you on your utterly Pyrrhic victory over Donald J. Trump! It must bring you tremendous satisfaction.
ReplyDeleteInteresting perspective on Milei, Rod. You know more about it than I do. Of course, what you omitted is that ANY solution to Argentina's fiscal/financial crisis is bound to hurt, most likely in the short, medium, AND long term.
Jack is right: let the electoral fruits of Dem lawfare be the final judgement against it. What's more, Rod, we conservatives might be coming around to your way of thinking in one sense: lawfare seems to be great for boosting the electability of our candidates. More lawfare, please???
Jack, the truth is that private enterprise and government largesse and coercion are so intimately interwoven in our health care system that even telling them apart becomes difficult. Let's not forget that the Dems are NEO-Marxists. In fact, they have no issue with profits, as long as it's their donors amassing them.
My hope is that higher courts in NYS will nix Trump's conviction before SCOTUS ever gets its hands on it. That would be to New York's credit, and I suspect to New York's advantage.
Hmm. I'm not sure there's any inevitability to our two party system, much less to the continuance of the Republican and Democratic Parties in their current forms. In fact, I would say this country is more than overdue for a partisan transformation. DJT was a strong candidate to initiate it, but so far he's been remarkably loyal to the GOP.
Will the Dems go all out to oppose Hegseth? I dunno. Seems to me they would be wise to invest what little political capital they have left in a campaign against a nominee that they can ACTUALLY defeat. But who would that be? Hmmm.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: Any rendering of a "lawful"decision in DJT's appeal, at any state court level in NY, would surely be disingenuous and politically and incidentally dictated. NY need not fear for its reputation and any further damage that it might sustain from a cynical switcheroo ; it is already perhaps irretrievably beneath national contempt. Our benighted state can serve now only as a pitiful example of American neomarxism in dominant power and that example will be closely observed by common sense America. But if NY persists in its folly, we can reasonably expect it will be scornfully tasked by the Federal judiciary at some level for its atavistic 20th century totalitarian disgraceful, vicious sham in this shameful "case".
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: Does NY, the erstwhile "Empire State" , actually think it can imperiously work its will contrary to a decisive national election and not suffer consequences?. We all know that far leftists consider themselves excused from searching examination and even (horrors) DOUBT of their intent or their methods. Let NY be a stalking horse for this kind of continued arrogant far left presumption in our Union and let its resultant shunning stand exemplary and instructive.
ReplyDeleteThere is much evidence of desertion from the foundering antiamerican vessel. The heretofore unthinkable reappraisal of DEI in many settings settings (eg. social and informational media) we see now is indicative of influential judgement that the far left's intended comprehensive dictation of political correctness has hit the rocks. Those who would cleave to a winner regardless of its nature, may have decided that the far left is a loser! In the real world, that's a big advance. As Ray maintains, we must not shrink from being as expeditious and ruthless as the America haters have been for 60 years now.
Ray from Jack: I agree at least in that the gulf between America and antiamerica will never narrow. But what the defeated far left may do again, as hard as it would be after their agonizingly close brush with assured permanent power from 2015 to Nov. 2024, is to snake back into the "establishment", play "democratic" games and wait for another opportunity to "fundamentally transform" the detested US. They did it after '72 and they might be able to pull it off again. Of course they will be minus the supremely dissembling , "entitled" radical faction of the multitudinous boomers, so who knows?
ReplyDeleteRAY TO JACK
DeleteWhat's really important now is who is going to replace Trump in 2028. This might come across as a bit premature, but four years goes fast.