Posted on 08/11/2009 6:06:13 AM PDT by Liberty1970
If you ask Dr. Steven Spady, there are two important words missing from the nation’s conversation about health reform: “personal responsibility.”
But Spady, a 54-year-old emergency physician in rural Kentucky, can’t talk about the topic right now. He’s too busy caring for people who he says don’t take care of themselves.
“I just had to go take care of man that left our hospital this morning and now has gone and got drunk and will suck up more health care dollars,” Spady wrote in a hurried e-mail late on a recent weeknight.
That same day, he cared for a 358-pound man with diabetes who didn’t take his medication for two days and then stayed up all night playing poker, plus five different people who overdosed on prescription drugs.
“It just makes me very upset when I have to pay more and more taxes to support government health care programs and have to work longer and longer hours to help a lot of people that just don’t seem to care,” he wrote.
It’s not that Spady lacks compassion. He’s been on medical missions to Mexico and Haiti and has donated thousands of hours of free care in the Appalachian community where he’s worked for nearly a quarter century.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Today, Americas problem is "want."
There are very few people who are actually in need. Trillions of dollars have been wasted on the democrat base's coveting of their neighbors goods.
The government has no more right to handle my health care than it does doing my grocery shopping, telling me where to live, or deciding what kind of work I must do.
Obama is a control freak!
I dont know whether the bulk of the costs are self-inflicted as so much of the expense comes with aging and in the last few years of people’s lives. But he is speaking a real truth here. Liberal elites simply wont deal with the facts. They refuse to get it.
The medical literature is filled with the evidence, such as low-income women who dont show up for prenatal care even if when it is free. There is widespread disinterest in screenings for all sorts of things from high blood pressure to breast cancer. First prize has to go to people who get organ transplants, dont take their anti-rejection medicine, reject the organ, then want another one.
Despite all this, RATS and even Republicans continue to believe that it’s just about money. The stupidity and ignorance are staggering.
Why should they?
Of course, there are pros and cons to that question. As you may know, that is part of the reasoning behind the property tax exemption for the elderly.
Ridiculous argument.
Actually, it isn't.
If you are a good driver, why should you have to pay auto insurance rates similar to those for bad drivers?
A major point of socializing medicine is precisely that “objectionable behavior” comes under the domain of police-state governance and our polypragmatons (busybody governors*) get the satisfaction of FORCING people to mend their ways as lawmakers & regulators see fit.
Our would-be tyrants will find out the hard way getting between citizens and their vices is a very bad idea.
FWIW: I was informed I had high cholesterol. Changed my diet, dropped 20 pounds, and expect the next lipid test will turn out excellent. I am not pleased with the notion of my insurance payments (private or public) going to those not so inclined to make small changes with big health care savings. However, I am not inclined to _force_ them to mend their ways.
(* - as in those who govern, not as in state governors.)
Google "Hitlers Health Care" and see the similarities.
Stalin and Pol Pot also had their Universal Health Care packages. Today, the democrats are going to do the same thing - "for our own good."
What is ridiculous about it? Here is an even better question: why should I be forced to pay school taxes given that my wife is homeschooling our three children? Why am I forced to support a system that actively preaches against my beliefs? Do you have any idea how offensive that is to me?
It's not as if government schools are "necessary". It is not even governments' job to educate children. That is a parental responsibility. The idea that other people should be forced to pay for my kids education is, again, stupid and evil.
Yeah, that was a major point of contention when I was being considered as a kidney donor. The SIL in question has made quite a few "bad choices" (although the kidney failure itself was not due to any of them, so far as I know). My wife was ready to make it REALLY clear to her sister that if she got my kidney, she was going to take real good care of it!
If a patient is too sick the vet just puts them to sleep. Obamacare will do the same.
Bottom line - difference between taxes, which supposedly go for the ‘common good’, and insurance. Under single payer, we would all pay taxes for the ‘common good’ of ‘free health care’. Under insurance, you are supposed to have the option of reducing your costs by making smart decisions.
Agreed. We had to do the same. We could have used the funds for our own children's education. Two are now in college, so we're doing more than our part for Americas future.
The government makes us pay everyone elses bills before we're allowed to use what's left to pay for our own. We pay for every welfare family before we even get our paychecks. If we pay our own bills first and give welfare what's left over instead, we're visited by the IRS.
The “Great Society” welfare programs of the 1960’s are simply a way for the dhimms to maintain a permanent government-subsidized underclass of losers who take more and more from America’s producers and continue to vote for dhimms who keep them dependent.
I have no problem providing for the truly helpless but I sure do have a problem taking care of the truly clueless.
I work in an ER. A large percentage of our customers are covered by Medicaid. Many are unmarried females with multiple kids from multiple sperm donors who are so morbidly obese, tattooed, pierced, and nasty that I cannot comprehend any man with an ounce of self-respect having intercourse with them. Therein lies the problem. Welcome to the dhimmocratic vision of America.
Excellent point.
yes, and it also explains why the secular progresives want so desperately to get rid of religion in many aspects of public life.
If you are insured then no one is forced to pay for it; the premium payers are voluntarily sharing the risks.
However if you are paying taxes (by threat and coercion) then, yes, you are forced to share the risks, and, no, that is improper.
At least public education CAN benefit the surrounding community, which is paying the taxes. Kids in school, especially a good school with good after-school activities, are less likely to be menaces to society. Until the government controls who gets to have kids and how many, so that we “know” that they are being trained at home to be upstanding citizens, unfortunately public education is a bit of a necessary evil. There should, however, be some sort of voucher system, since public schools obviously aren’t so much to educate anymore as they are a day care.
On the other hand, relating back on the original topic, public health care has no benefit to the community as a whole. The only way it would is with communicable diseases, and that is already taken care of with vaccine subsidies (which the government also can’t get right) and health classes in the public education system (including sex-ed).
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