by Keith Distel

Created on: April 29, 2009   Last Updated: May 01, 2009

Most people you talk to will tell you that they want universal health care because they want equal access to health care like the rich people have. In this country today everyone has equal access to health care, it is just a matter of who is paying for it. Many people want free premium health care, with an emphasis on free. Giving everyone health care without the balancing effect of the capitalist market to even it out is a bad idea. Universal health care will be anything but free or universal.

adparams.getadspec('c_billboard1');

The poor in this country will clamor and complain that they can not afford to have all the health care that they want. Not what they need, but what they want. There is a belief that on some level people in America are being denied health care. This is patently false. People just have to pay for what they receive, and many of our citizens do not like this. The choice to be mad at the rich is easier than being self reliant paying your own bills.

Universal health care works on the Marxist principle from each to his abilities to each to his needs. Which means that if you work hard and make lots of money you have to pay for the people who want to stay home and eat Cheeto's all day. Those who have pay, those who do not, receive. Sounds good as long as you are not the one paying. This is a principle that was tried out from the first landing of the pilgrims. At James town colony the original charter was set up as a socialist system, with everyone piling their food and earnings together at the end of the year. After the first couple years the governor came to the conclusion that if he left the system the way it was, they would all starve to death as no man wanted to work hard to improve the lot of the neighbors. Sounds callus, but it is human nature.

This is all before we get down to the reality of the graft and corruption engendered by any such set up. People who know that they don't have to pay for things seem to attach themselves to any program like this like leeches to a leg in swamp water. Women will go to the hospital to pick up tampons where they are free, people will order drugs and bandages they don't "pay" for and sell them to the black market that will spring up. There are lots of examples of the things I am speaking of, Russia, Canada, and Great Britain. Because of people flooding the system and of the doctors scrambling to get out, there are never enough health care professionals to care for the ill.

Hundreds of people every day come to America to get medical treatment that they can not get in their own universal health care systems. Men and women flock to the US all the time to get surgeries that they would have to wait years for in their own countries because of the fact that with our capitalist system, the doctors want to work and the people don't flood them with silly claims. Recently a woman in Great Britain was told the she could not get the drugs that would arrest her macular degeneration because her consultant denied her the drug. This is the future we are looking at if we as Americans let the government create universal health care.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. Cheap lunchs are usually what you pay for. I don't know about you, but I don't want to be stuck eating at the buffet line when I need a good steak. I would rather pay for it than to go hungry waiting in line.

Learn more about this author, Keith Distel.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.