Dakota Beacon

Dear Radio Talk Show Host:

I heard part of your show last Thursday morning.  I think you’re nuts to support this headlong rush to the government taking over our health care system.  It will lead to lower quality care.  See Dr John Manesis’s letter attached.  Secondly, it is simply not the responsibility of the American taxpayer to provide health insurance/coverage for everyone.  I’ve heard that illegal aliens will be covered by this.  That would be a further outrage.

“Tax the rich” you say.  How much can the rich absorb?  Do you want everyone taxed down to one level of mediocrity?  Already about half of U.S. citizens pay no income tax and 5% pay something like 80-90% or more of the income tax collected.  The rich, and everyone else, owe a proportionate share of their income to provide for national defense and other essential government.  But none of us owes the government a portion of our resources for its redistribution to someone else.

I believe all of us with more than enough have a moral obligation to give a helping hand to the less fortunate.  But that should be through church and charity, not through the heavy hand of a wasteful government.  Excesses in wasteful government leave less for donors to donate.  I’m sure you know that donating to a good cause through a telemarketing campaign is an inefficient method.  The telemarketing firm gets 25-75% or more of the funds raised.  That’s similar to helping the needy through the federal government.  Much is burned up in administration.  As a former state legislator you know that.  Do you really believe that government will be more efficient running our health care system than is the private sector?

I’ve been on the board of a self-funded health trust for 15 years.  The main drivers of increased health care cost are an aging population and demand for new and expensive technologies, including drugs.  Please tell me how more government in that mix will save money without diminishing quality.

Earlier this month we celebrated the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  That document’s most memorable phrase is…that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.  Part of that liberty is to work hard and prosper, or to refrain from doing so.  It is not the liberty of government to confiscate an ever-increasing share from the former to distribute to the latter.  It is not the purpose of government to assure equal outcomes.

Medicare and Social Security are in deep financial problems.  Why should we create another huge expensive government bureacracy to run and ruin our health care system?  Consider this, scammer Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison for running a Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors out of $50 billion.  Meanwhile our federal government runs the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time, called Social Security.  Continued extraction of taxes from today’s workers pays for benefits to today’s retirees.  The kitty is about to run dry and today’s 30, 40 and 50 year olds will wake up to much less benefits than they paid for.  That isn’t the kind of management I want put in charge of your or my health care.

Food, clothing and shelter are said to be the essentials of life.  Should the government take over all farms and order the farmers around as a nationalized health care plan will eventually do with health care providers?  If it’s good for the health care industry why wouldn’t it be good for the farming industry?  Food is actually more important to life than health care.  I see my family doctor once per year, but I usually eat everyday.

The mentality in Washington, DC these days is for more and more government.  A failure of government is used as an excuse for more government.  As unemployment in the private sector increases, the federal government employment rolls grow.  That is an unsustainable course, as we have learned with Social Security.

Steve Strege, Fargo, North Dakota

Socialized medicine works ‘if you’re not sick’

By: Dr John Manesis, Fargo   Published in The Fargo Forum Saturday July 11, 2009

I have read with interest letters extolling socialized medicine in Canada. I practiced medicine in the U.S. for almost 40 years and have not personally known a single physician who moved from our country to practice in Canada.

I’ve worked with several doctors who were born and practiced there and came to Fargo. I asked one of them how he compared socialized medicine to our style of care. He said, “Socialized medicine in Canada is very good if you’re not sick, but if you need a hip or knee replacement, or an angiogram, a CT scan or MRI, get in line.”

Another doctor recently told me that his brother in Canada was scheduled for a colonoscopy there but would have to wait more than a year before the procedure could be done. Canadian doctors I’ve known have all been well-trained and highly motivated but chose to pursue their careers here.

The anointed one, President Barack Obama, who already has the federal government owning auto companies and dictating policy to banks, insurance companies and brokerages, has nothing to show for this unprecedented intervention other than massive debts. He and his cadre of federal czars think they know how to “reform medicine” and claim they’ll save us money by doing so.

Socialized medicine would lead to layers of bureaucracy, rationed care, longer patient waits, less innovation and drug research, and more expense, not less. It would result in fewer private health insurance options. The president has said, without a scintilla of evidence, that electronic patient records will result in huge savings. To the contrary, if mandated, it will cost billions and threaten patients’ right to privacy.

Our system of medical care needs improvement, but this can be done by the health care industry in several ways: instituting portable health insurance policies a person can take from one job to another; letting CEOs, as in the case of Safeway, initiate bonus policies for employees who quit smoking, lose weight, and lower their cholesterol; allow insurance policies to be purchased across state lines; medical savings accounts would encourage patients to compare prices and economize.

Obama’s stated number of 47 million uninsured is inflated – many employees are between jobs and without insurance for short periods.

Our children and grandchildren have already been saddled with obligations to pay trillion-dollar deficits. To add the cost of socialized medicine to the mix would be a terrible mistake.

I, for one, say “thanks but no thanks.”