In response to Fred Sopic’s letter which was a reply to an earlier letter written by me, I must take issue with several items he mentioned.
First of all, my daughter uses student loans to pay for her education, but it not a form of socialism. The interest accumulates during the term that the student is in school, and repayment is deferred until after the student graduates. In reality, over the period of the loan, the student repays approximately double what is borrowed.
Plain and simple, that is capitalism.
Next is the interstate highway system. I personally pay $550.00 per year for the opportunity to drive my truck on the highways of this country. That is in addition to the abundance of fuel taxes that I pay on every gallon of fuel that goes through my truck’s engine, and last year, my fuel bill was just over $78,000.00.
That is not socialism either. The sad part of the whole mess is that so much of the tax money that I pay goes to places that have absolutely nothing to do with highway maintenance, which is where every penny should go. Amtrak is a recipient of considerable largess from the government every year because it cannot support itself, so Uncle Sam coughs up millions every year to keep it running. Government support of something that cannot survive without a huge influx of cash every year is socialism.
As far as police and fire services are concerned, that is one of the reasons we pay taxes. Police are government employees no matter how you slice it, and the only way any form of government can pay their wages is by levying taxes. Any government cannot go out and work to bring money in; its only form of income is through taxation. Fire service in this area is primarily volunteer as far as staffing goes. The borough owns most of the equipment and pays for maintenance on it.
Again, this is what your taxes buy you. It is a return on your investment, so to speak.
Again, not socialism.
What concerns me about Obamacare is the fact that not one of the 535 members of Congress has read the entire bill. There are several private citizens that have, and what they are finding is downright scary. Obama says that his plan calls for coverage almost equal to what members of Congress have now, but the real bill is nothing like that. Provisions have been inserted in the bill that will eliminate private health care insurance in as little as ten years.
If the bill becomes law, you won’t have a choice; you will be forced to be part of Obamacare. There are provisions for ‘end of life care’; at some point in a person’s life, he or she may need surgery to replace a knee or hip, or perhaps open heart surgery.
Ultimately, there will be someone at some level of government who will make a decision at to whether this person is ‘worth the investment’. Who, other than God, is entitled to make this decision? Under some of the provisions that no one on the left is saying much about, you would be given pain killers rather than receive the treatment you need, and be told that this is all you’re entitled to.
It is just going to cost too much money to fix someone of your advanced years. Senator Robert Byrd is in his 90’s and suffering from various ailments. Would he accept the answer that you or I would receive? I think not.
If this single payer insurance system is so great, let the entire Congress and everyone in the executive branch go on the same system. To a man, not one of them is willing to accept this system to cover them.
There is also a provision that Chuck Norris, of all people, found that states that the government will have the right to send representatives into your home to make sure that you are raising your children according to government standards.
What’s next; brown shirts? This bill is going to take away all our basic rights regarding healthcare and even the way we raise our children! Obama is in such a hurry to get this bill ramrodded through the congress; why? Is he afraid that the longer the bill remains out there, the more people are going to learn about it and rally against it?
Follow the escapades of Arlen Specter; everywhere he goes for his town hall meetings, he is meeting a wall of resistance from the public that is unheard of in this era. The more the populace learns about Obamacare, the less they like it.
My family has excellent health insurance through my wife’s employer. I don’t want that taken away. Obama says we will be able to keep our insurance if we want it, but people like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi want to take that away from us. The bulk of the bill is written by a bunch of snipes that work in the bowels of the capitol and rarely ever see the light of day. Even those who are so in favor of the bill haven’t read it in its entirety. The entire bill is over 1,100 pages long; I’m sorry, but I have a life that simply doesn’t have enough time to read that much.
Besides, that’s why we have representatives in Washington, DC. They are supposed to know what is in a bill before they vote on it, but so very little is known about anything they ever vote on.
What we have in Washington right now, for the most part, is a bunch of lap dogs that want nothing more than for the government to control every part of our lives, and that is socialism. There was a bill at the federal level that was passed and signed into law some years ago that states that no one can be denied access to healthcare, regardless of their ability to pay.
Ask people in the states that border Mexico what their deficits look like because they treat so many illegal aliens. No one in this country is denied access to healthcare; however, a lot of advanced healthcare is denied for any number of reasons. What we should really look at in this country is tort reform. Huge settlements being paid out to people by liberal juries that want to punish a doctor for making a mistake. Obama has ruled out any form of tort reform; he says that doctors need to be held accountable.
True, they do need to be held accountable for mistakes they make, but huge settlements only serve to send malpractice rates into the stratosphere, and that eventually drives good doctors out of business because they simply can’t afford the rates anymore. Those that can afford the rates, or just want to hold on to their practice, raise their rates to the point where no one can afford to go to the doctor, and the insurance companies refuse to pay a claim because they say it’s too high.
It’s a vicious circle that has no end; it’s the perfect self-fulfilling prophesy. I will not argue the point that we truly need health care reform in this country. But we do not need to go rushing into it in such a way that it will take away our rights and put the government in charge of close to a third of his country’s economy, to say nothing of how many thousands will lose their jobs in the insurance industry.
We’re trying to save this country from collapse; not put more people on the unemployment line.
