One Dead Canary Coming Up!
A few minutes past midnight on Monday, January 21st, 2013, someone will give birth to the day’s first American baby. With any luck, that baby will have become the first American to see his first light of day in a post-Obama world. That’s the good news. Unfortunately, the celebration of that good fortune will have to wait a while. For there is also some bad news—some really bad, you’d-better-sit-down-for-this, maybe-you’d-like-to-reconsider-this-whole-being-born-thing kind of news: That baby owes $185,000. Before interest. And that figure, even if the baby is born under a most propitious star, will grow by $5,000 per year, at least until he, along with the other babies born that day, is old enough to rise up and take action to stop the avalanche.
Why $185,000? That is the share of America’s combined debt and unfunded liabilities (minus federal assets) that will rest on the head of each individual citizen as of next January. And remember that each of this infant’s parents, grandparents and siblings will have his or her own $185,000 sinkhole to deal with, so there’s not much hope that Dad will come through with a little extra allowance to help out; he’ll have his own problems.
Why the $5000 per year increase? That is the per capita breakdown of a $1.5 trillion deficit. If you would prefer to be an optimist, and assume that the next president and congress will work heroically to achieve a half-trillion dollar cut in future deficits, then perhaps you can cheer yourself with the thought that in that case the annual increase in our baby’s personal share of America’s doomsday machine will be a mere $3,200. That’s 213 Walmart birthday cakes the little tyke must give to Uncle Sam each year—just to avoid deepening his private abyss any further. Better than the 333 cakes he’d be donating to break even on Obama-sized deficits, don’t you think? Won’t you be happy you voted Republican?
Overcome Entitlement Mentality Health Insurance - News
This is the American form of the entitlement mentality which has stealthily crept into the nation's heart. Once firmly entrenched there, like a drug addiction, it will be extraordinarily difficult to overcome. And this brings us back to our baby.
Gas prices have increased by 83 percent, the federal debt is up by 43 percent, health insurance costs are up by 23 percent, the number of individuals receiving food stamps is up by 45 percent, home values are down by 13 percent, and 6.4 million more
Health Around World: Can Government Healthcare Work in America?
Much has been written on this site and others, about the fallacy of a successfully run government healthcare delivery system in the United States.
Whether it is labeled single-payer, socialized medicine, national healthcare, etc., it is all the same and it will never work in America. In virtually every nation where the government runs the healthcare system, costs have risen well beyond expectations; long waits for treatment are commonplace; care is rationed and some treatments are denied; and taxes have increased to pay for the unexpected cost increases. There are no truly successful nationalized healthcare systems, when quality of care is compared to the gold standard: The U.S. healthcare system. By most measures however, the U.S. lags behind many other industrialized nations.
According to the World Health Organization, the U.S. ranks 24th in the world in life expectancy. This statistic alone should be cause for alarm, but upon further examination, we learn that the reasons have little to do with our healthcare system and more to do with the way we drive, what we eat, our violent behavior, our tobacco use, and our substance abuse.
The U.S. spends more on healthcare, per capita, than virtually every other industrialized country. But again, if we examine why, we find that this has much more to do with factors other than the actual cost of healthcare, like legal awards and fees, defensive medicine, malpractice insurance, the high cost of advanced technology, and certainly not least; the high cost that we all incur for the government mandates placed on health insurance companies.
We pay more for prescription drugs than any other country. However, the cost of drugs still remains only about 10% of our total cost of healthcare. Upon further examination, we can thank our own government for this. More on this later.
There is no arguing against significant reform of our healthcare system, but the prescription for the cure cannot be written by our current government. The Democrats in control of the U.S. government have only one fix; more government. They know no other way, it is in their DNA. But even putting aside politics, there is no way for a single payer system to work in America. Here is why...