Our Healthcare is paid for by Government-sponsored programs called Medicare and Medicaid
by Ed Klein, Peoria, IL
How many of you, watching the recent TV news, reading about town hall meetings, rallies and other far right-sponsored gatherings, wonder at the angry, hate-filled rhetoric, outright lies, gross misrepresentations and irrational, screaming outbursts? Get government out of our healthcare system! Don’t let government get between us and our doctors! Keep the government from taking over the healthcare system! No socialized medicine for us! Signs showing Obama as Hitler, angry spectators wearing guns, insults and threatened violence. On and on it goes – an inbred sickness whose contamination is spread by people like Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and others.
More than wonder about those caught up in the demented frenzies at these events and those hiding behind the flag to conceal their irrational rage and justify their violence, we should be deeply concerned … fearful, in fact … of the pathology that motivates them. How easily we forget. This present day rage parallels that stirred into a frenzy by the John Birchers and H.L. Hunts of the ‘60s leading up to the assassination of President Kennedy.
Have you noticed that many of those mindlessly screaming the loudest seem to be senior citizens? I say mindlessly because they are the largest group of people whose incomes derive from the socialistic system we call Social Security. And whose healthcare is largely paid for by another government sponsored socialistic programs called Medicare and Medicaid. Sadly, the greatest tragedy of those old people is to have lived so long and learned so little!
If one pays attention to what is going on with health insurance, it’s not the government, but often health insurance companies who stand between them and their doctors. They do it by raising premiums so high many can no longer afford them, by denying coverage for pre-existing conditions, by dropping coverage when the bills get high, and harassing policyholders by creating confusion and fear of a government takeover.
And what about those dreaded death panels? Yes, they do exist, but they’re not run by the government. Many of the 47 million uninsured and underinsured Americans face death because they cannot afford either the care or medicines needed to keep them alive. And many thousands are condemned to die each year at the hands of death panels created by a capitalistic system dominated by big business whose only goal is as much profit as they can make regardless of who gets lost in the shuffle. If that’s what the angry screamers want, they’ve already got it. Could the government do any worse?
