Some Kentuckians who have come to depend on Kentucky Homeplace Program for free medical services are now out of luck.
The program is out of money and has been closed.
Framing the problem as a "budget shortfall" is a convenient way to make the case for tax increases. But whether Frankfort is bailed out by federal taxpayers or state taxpayers fails to address the persistent issue of too much spending.
And the main point is that programs like this seek to spread dependency on government to people who have too much income to qualify for Medicaid. And when they fail there will always be people they can prop in front of cameras to make the case for another, bigger program.
How many failed programs must we endure before we stop setting up more government programs to buy healthcare for people who could buy it more cheaply if they didn't have to compete with the government for medical services?
That last question may take a little while to sink in. It's a shame that living without government manipulation of healthcare in America is now an abstract concept.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Government healthcare fails again
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3 comments:
Framing the problem as a "budget shortfall" is not the "persistent issue of too much spending." The problem is due to an unfair system of taxation. If taxation is not based upon proportion, then there's not going to be sufficient revenues.
Proportional taxation should be levied on the movement of all moneys.
Corporate welfare giveaways, exempting the sale of racehorses from the state sales tax, are major contributing factors to budget shortfalls.
So too are the lack of jobs due to poor Republican mismanagement of the national economy and such un-American philosophies as espoused by Grover Norquist and his "drain the tub" economic philosophy.
Proportional taxation is what our founders envisioned. This was succinctly stated in Federalist Paper 12, by Alexander Hamilton who wrote:
"The ability of a country to pay taxes must always be proportioned, in a great degree, to the quantity of money in circulation, and to the celerity with which it circulates. Commerce, contributing to both these objects, must of necessity render the payment of taxes easier, and facilitate the requisite supplies to the treasury."
Then there's the anti-American expenses to incarcerate non-violent marijuana users or anyone involved in the growing of hemp. The federal government spends about $10 billion a year waging a war against hemp, including marijuana, incarcerating non-violent users costing Kentuckians about $270 million a year. That alone would balance Kentucky's budget.
This is 180 degrees at odds with American values. Alexander Hamilton in his 1791 report to Congress on manufactures wrote about hemp: "This is an article of importance enough to warrant the employment of extraordinary means in its favor."
The rest of your argument is all bogus nonsense based upon your loathing of American values and the implementation of a fair tax system, based upon proportion on the movement of all moneys. The purpose of such revenues are to meet the needs of the citizenry. That's what good government is about; that was the vision of our founders.
"How many failed programs must we endure before we stop setting up more government programs to buy healthcare for people who could buy it more cheaply if they didn't have to compete with the government for medical services?"
Well said!
Free market capitalism is the bedrock that underpins all the exceptional lifestyle that the average citizen enjoys and takes for granted. Virtually everything I own and enjoy is the result of entrepreneurial activity. Every once in awhile we should all take the time to look around and ask ourselves; how many of the "things" I used (and took for granted) today and how many of the "services" I used today were the result of "for profit" capitalism and how many came from the government.
Unfortunately, we have a media who consistently suggest that it is the government that somehow makes our lives better and that private enterprise is a necessary evil.
Oh well, we are currently in a pre-inauguration fantasy world where rational thought is pretty much AWOL.
Keep up the good work BPB!
There was a time when, if you wanted to become a physician, the bankrolling required more than the velleity of simply making the making the choice and the financing appears.
Then in the 1950’s and 1960’s the (then) HEW came up with what seemed a simple solution to the health care conundrum: financial aid to medical schools. They planned to flood the market with new MD’s and so cause increased competition to lower the cost factor attributable to doctors’ incomes.
In the mid 1970’s I was a dinner guest of a brilliant couple of Washington health apparatchiks. He was (among other things) guiding the nascent EPSDT program. And she (the sister of one of the Brookings Institution’s leading economists) was eventually to become the Director of the National Center for Health Statistics. In short, not only were they broadly wired into the beltway health establishment, they had their hands on the steering wheel.
Another guest that evening was the wife of a health economist who had recently been jilted by her co-researcher husband. And she was getting back at him by blabbing about the results of their latest findings, before they had been published: financial support of medical education was having the opposite effect on health costs than they had anticipated!
Although the money given to Medical Schools had worked to increase the supply of physicians, there hadn’t been the expected depressive influence on doc’s incomes. They had found that wherever there were new MD graduates, they would produce medical care and make a handsome income while doing it. The equation was more docs=more procedures and higher medical costs—not lower fees.
By producing more Docs, Washington had increased the supply of costly medical care providers who continued to command a great return on the investment the government had made in their education.
There was amused consternation around the dinner table. Medical Economics had not responded to the “Law” of supply and demand. “Well, maybe we’ll do better with this new entity, The HMO.”
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