Lot’s of Free Stuff….Wow, That’s Great! …. Oh, Wait ….
The Junior Senator from Vermont has recently been joined by a Snowflake from a New York City Borough touting the pleasures of Progressive-Socialist-Marxism. This is the new, “New Deal” that promises, presented with a straight face, free centralized health care for all, free college, jobs for everyone, etc. A bit of a generalization, but essentially, with Government assistance, most everything would be free. Dadgumit, that sounds great. But there are just a few teeny, tiny problems.
On that jobs thing. Right now, with most all who are capable of working, and, importantly, who want to work, are doing so, thanks to economic expansion within the private sector, driven by federal tax-reform, igniting that darn capitalism thing (sorry, Karl), a universal jobs guarantee likely isn’t a real big seller right now.
And that free college-for-all promise, as with most of the extreme leftist grab bag of goodies (i.e., Forever-Christmas, with any lingering spiritual basis redacted, of course), the fair question is how will we pay for all of the proposed no-charge goodies? And the answer, which you already know, is to substantially increase taxes on those darned, profit-and-job-generating corporations, and the evil rich (“You didn’t build that!”), effectively extinguishing this roaring blaze of an economy. Realistically, taxes would not only have to sky-rocket for the “rich,” but to some degree, federal rates would inevitably end up rising across the full range of tax-paying wage earners, regardless.
And speaking of the cost of this free stuff, in particular, that free, single-payer (i.e., the federal government) universal health care, the actual projected cost of which is a real head-turner (if not, an outright neck-snapper). The Mercatus Center at George Mason University (Virginia) has done a deep dive into projected costs and has concluded that “Medicare for All” would run over $32-TRILLION over a ten-year period. Other economists have arrived at roughly the same number.
For comparison, America’s 2018 federal revenue budget is reportedly north of $3.6-Trillion ($36-trillion+ over those same ten-years), with federal expenditures estimated to exceed that by over $300-billion this year, adding to our already unsustainable national debt. Doing the math, it’s clear that expanding Medicare coverage to every US citizen (what about Illegals?) would absorb nearly all of our currently projected annual federal revenue budget. It simply is not financially feasible to eliminate employer and individual private health care plans in favor of one government plan covering all.
There’s also the matter of availability, access, and quality of government run health care for all. England has had National Health Service for many years, but with budget cuts during recent years, hospitals there are experiencing difficulty dealing with the patient load. And wait-times for treatment are sometimes unconscionably long, regardless of one’s illness. Some over-worked doctors have complained about the situation publically. One characterized it as “having to practice ‘battlefield’ medicine,” while another NHS physician spoke of the “3rd world conditions, caused by overcrowding.” Single-payer universal care inevitably creates even heavier demand on physicians, other healthcare professionals, and medical facilities. So “free” does not guarantee the quality and ready access to care that Americans have come to expect under their current company, private, or individual retiree Medicare plans. And especially so if “All” ends up including illegal immigrants, and under a comprehensive Socialist regime, you know that it would. Remember those Open Borders they seek!
So, in addition to the unrealistic initial costs of “Medicare for All” in the U.S., there is the very real likelihood of future budget cuts, compromising patient services even further. Cost savings would lead to the rationing of procedures, drugs, and care. Seniors would be the most vulnerable to denial of service (“they’re gonna die soon anyway”). Try explaining that to Mom and Dad, upon whom care could be considered simply wasted (“just take some aspirin for your pain”). Oh, and with “Medicare for All,” physicians compensation will be dramatically reduced, in line with current Medicare reimbursements, making doctors essentially federal government employees. Think that might discourage graduate students from pursuing medicine, along with chasing existing physicians into retirement or other professions, all at a time when we’re projecting a future shortage of doctors! Universal Medicare, as proposed by the Progressive-Socialist-Marxists, replacing private and employer plans with federal government single-payer, is simply unrealistic. And it would give the Washington bureaucracy far too much control over the healthcare needs of individual Americans, which was the desired end-game of the ill-conceived Obamacare experiment, generating more population control, but not better, affordable healthcare.
Along with free healthcare, free college, jobs for all, etc., the Democratic Socialists of America organization, the largest Socialist group in the nation, has a list of things they want “abolished” in our country. In the interest of achieving an all-powerful central government, a recent DSA demonstration in New York City, called for abolishing: Profit – Prisons – Cash Bail – Borders – ICE. I’m guessing they might also move to abolish local police departments, in favor of national security police, the chosen domestic peace-keeping solution routinely instituted by totalitarian regimes, which is what we would inevitably end up with. But, then again, without borders or prisons, crime would, of course, also have to be “abolished”! That seems reasonable if one’s objective is national anarchy, with an elite-run, centralized Marxist government, and with it, of course, the total destruction of the United States of America, as we, and generations before, have known, loved, given thanks for, and pledged allegiance to.
And that brings us to the biggest problem with all of this nonsense. Promising all manner of free stuff, freedom from all wants, means that “happy days” it seems, would be just around the corner, but not long lasting. As former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once wisely stated: “Socialism works fine until you run out of other people’s money.”
As we well know, nothing is ever really “free,” and that includes our liberty, fought for and preserved for us, by generations of courageous Americans at enormous human cost. “Free” always comes at a price. For great loss also lurks just around that “free” corner. Because with all of the projected free stuff to be given, unspoken is the personal freedom inevitably taken away, by ever increasing Big Government control. Free stuff gained. Individual freedom lost. And that, folks, is the crushing trade-off, one we would sincerely hope that God-fearing, nation-loving Americans, the many, many millions of us, will never, ever, be tempted to make.
Elections have consequences, as we clearly found out in 2008, and the following eight-year full-court-press to “fundamentally transform America.” Translation: Bigger Government and ever-expanding control. Be certain to cast your vote in this critically important November election. And cast it for those who support democracy, capitalism, and individual freedom. Not for those riding the Progressive-Socialist-Marxist “Free for All” choo-choo train. For, heaven help us, that result would, indeed, produce a free-for-all, meaning conflict, not the kind so glibly promised. And by so doing, destroy the United States of America, our homeland, the longest, most successful, and, yes, the most exceptional effort to preserve national freedom and sovereignty the world has ever known. Vote wisely.
(N.H.S. quotes/New York Times/Ceylan Yeginsu/January 3, 2018; DSA demands/Breitbart.com/Joshua Caplan/July 30, 2018)