On Fox News Wednesday, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton told Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, "If we don't get universal health care, we will continue to bleed money." Funny. The more Washington politicians promise to control health care costs, the higher they go. As humorist P.J. O'Rourke famously said, "If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free."
Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama both promise to provide access to health care for all Americans by mandating that employers provide or contribute to the cost of health plans for employees. Clinton would mandate that all uninsured adults buy health care, Obama has no "individual mandate." Both candidates would offer health care for all children and subsidies for adults, and would require insurers to cover everyone, regardless of health.
Somehow they propose to offer and subsidize more health care without raising costs for the majority of Americans who already have it.
That's where we get to the meat of the matter. No one seems to want to cut other government spending to pay for healthcare. Why not? We have a $3 trillion dollar budget, and according to Hillary's plan, it'll cost around $60 billion a year (opening year, watch as it continues to rise when people realize they can get health coverage for free). That's about 0.02% of the budget. Seems insignificant doesn't it? However, nowhere in anyone's plan, except for maybe McCain's, does anyone talk about cutting spending.
Why not? If Democrats want universal health care so badly, why aren't they talking about cutting programs that need to be cut? What about long term welfare? What about cutting Congress' ability to lease cars at taxpayer expense? There's literally millions of ways we can cut costs to pay for universal health care.
But neither Hillary nor Obama talk about that. Why?
Because of political talk points. Both of them know we can't afford $60 billion a year program without cutting it elsewhere.
So Democrats, do us all a favor; If you favor universal health care, come to us with a plan on how to pay for it without making it simply more taxes for everyone to pay.
Travis
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