By: Mary Mostert, Analyst (originalsources.com)
August 16, 2000
Monday night Hillary Clinton hinted that her effort to nationalize 17% of the nation's economy by nationalizing medicine was not dead. Last night the party's left wing made it crystal clear. If Al Gore is elected, and a Democrat Congress is seated, we heard last night from Sen. Ted Kennedy, the medical industry will be socialized.
Almost without exception, the subject of health care was introduced with a sentence or two that castigated the HMOs which allow non-medical people to decide whether or not an operation or a procedure will be covered for patients. Their feigned righteous indignation seemed a bit strained since it was the Democrats who demanded the HMOs in the first place. It wasn't that long ago when we were being told that Organized approaches to delivery of services: The Board will sponsor efforts to encourage States and providers to develop and expand organized approaches to health care delivery, such as HMOs , hospital-based and community-oriented team health services, and neighborhood-hospital-home health care plans.
For example, in March of 1992, Sen. Tom Daschle, who would be the Senate Majority leader should the Democrats take back the Senate, introduced S 2513, the American Health Security Plan" which called for the creation of a "Federal Health Board," appointed by the President, who would be responsible for:
"Organized approaches to delivery of services: The Board will sponsor efforts to encourage States and providers to develop and expand organized approaches to health care delivery, such as HMOs , hospital-based and community-oriented team health services, and neighborhood-hospital-home health care plans."
In this pre-Hillary Health Care plan the provision to pay doctors would be negotiated between the Board and "State organizations representing each of the practitioner disciplines." However, what the doctor would be paid was determined by:
(5) A process is established that keeps overall reimbursements in line with the amount of funding budgeted for practitioner reimbursements.
Since 1992, some of the "money saving" provisions of that bill were passed and have been signed into law by the Clinton administration. That is why a mechanic who replaces the transmission on your car will probably charge you about $2,000, whereas under the 1997 Budget Act which "reformed" Medicare, supposedly to stop fraud, the orthopedic surgeon who replaces your hip is only allowed $800.00 for the operation. The "therapy" provided by non-doctors, which has not been proven to speed recovery, on the other hand, might cost up to $40,000. It seems only the doctors that socialized medicine wants to target.
The end result, of course, is that there is a growing waiting list for hip replacements for Medicare patients. If the Democrats are elected and follow through on their promises, instead of private insurance that enables the rest of America to get medical care when needed, all of America will have the same kind of rationed health under HMOs that has been increasingly forced on seniors.
Most of the talks seemed to be given by people in a 1960s time warp. They all sounded just exactly like the talks we heard when Lyndon Johnson was stirring up support for his "War on Poverty" which passed in 1964 in the aftermath of the John F. Kennedy assassination. Its costs doubled in the first year, from $793 million in 1965, to $1.5 billion in 1996. Over the years of its existence the "War on Poverty" cost the American taxpayer over $5 trillion - which is about the same as the current national debt.
Sargent Shriver, brother-in-law of John F., Robert and Ted Kennedy was the first director of the OEO (Office of Economic Opportunity) which ran the War on Poverty. After its first year, in a report to Congress in 1965, Shriver said the "results reinforced his confidence that poverty in the United States "shall be abolished in our time." At the time it was designed to help the 35 million Americans who were in the "poverty" category.
Last night former presidential Candidate Bill Bradley said almost much the same thing we were hearing in the 1960s, before the $5 Trillion was spent. He pointed out that
"Tonight there are 44 million Americans without health insurance. That's 44 million Americans who can't take their sick baby to a doctor. Who don't have anyone to attend to their dying parents. Who can't get medical help so they can stay on the job."
When Clinton took office in 1992, there were only 35 million Americans without health insurance but Bill Bradley didn't mention that. Also, there are NO Americans who can't take their sick baby to a doctor because of poverty. In fact, the poor often have better health care than the middle class who often don't go to a doctor because they can't afford the time off from work. After all, if they did, they might not be able to pay their taxes that enable the poor to have health care whenever they want it. Bradley said:
"The whole point of the American ideal is an opportunity to pursue happiness is always present for all of us. Yet this chance is being denied to millions of working families who are trapped in a prison of poverty. Tonight one fifth of the children in this country are ill fed, ill housed and ill-educated ...Most of us would never turn our backs on a starving child. Yet every day we ignore 13 million poor children in this country. If all of them were gathered in one place, it would create a city bigger than New York and we would then see child poverty for the slow motion national disaster that it is. If we don't end child poverty in my life-time, shame on me, shame on you, shame on all of us!"This brought cheers from the crowd, most of whom were too young to have ever been involved in the inner city back in the 1960s when the "War on Poverty" was being waged. It was my experience in the 1960s with the "War on Poverty" and its corruption that prompted me to leave the Democratic Party and register Republican. It became obvious rather quickly that there were not enough honest people left in America to administer a program with that kind of money in it. It was obviously doing more harm than good to the mostly black families it was designed to "help." It appears that we are about to have our emotions whipped up again about the need to throw more money at the poverty problem. Bradley went on, to the cheers of the delegates:
"Let us pick up the torch of reform and once again return politics to the people! Is tackling these problems (universal health care and poverty) an unrealistic goal in these times of unprecedented prosperity? No."To those who call our goals unrealistic, I say, 'No!' I don't call these goals unrealistic. I call them common sense. I call them democratic. I call them American."
So far I haven heard any of the Democrats explain why we have all this poverty in a time of unparalleled Clinton prosperity. Isn't this tremendous increase in the number of people without health insurance something of an indictment of the Clinton "prosperity?" Even people on welfare these days are apt to have VCRs and cell phones. Why is it, do you suppose, there are so many children who are going to school without breakfast? Bradley told a heart wrenching story about a child who said it was not her "turn" to eat breakfast.
How can it be with all the WIC and food stamp and welfare programs and state employment program that a child would be going hungry in America?
Could it be, do you suppose, the irresponsibility of her parents who just didn't get up and fix a breakfast? The parents might be sick, or have a hang-over or be zonked out on drugs or just irresponsible. I used to marvel, back in the Sixties when I was in the inner city of Rochester New York on almost a daily basis at the number of beer, wine and whiskey bottles thrown on the empty lot next to the liquor store. After all the other businesses on the street had been closed down and the buildings razed to make way for "Redevelopment" the liquor store was still open and doing a profitable business. However, the food commodities given free to the "poor" quick often found their way to the garbage cans. Many people ate the butter (while the rest of us were eating margarine, not able to afford butter) and threw the beans, corn meal and other staples away.
And, again, that brings me back to the Republican anti-poverty program. After 35 years and expenditures of $5 trillion, there were MORE people living in poverty and on welfare in 1995 than ever in the history of our country. The Republican anti-poverty program was to reform the Welfare laws and put people to work. They passed the bill three times and Clinton vetoed it three times, claiming it would put poor children on the street. It didn't. Before the Republican Welfare Reform bill became law in 1996 there were 9, 274,976 children on welfare. In less than four years half of those children are no longer living on welfare, but are, in fact, living in homes where the parent or parents work for a living.
Obviously the Republican "Poverty Program" is far more successful than the Democrat poverty program. The Democrat poverty program expected nothing of its recipients. The Republican poverty program expected recipients to succeed in getting a job and getting their lives in order and 4 1/2 million have done so in a space of two years.
It's not money that many of the "poor" of America need. The number that end up in jail on drug charges proves that. If they have the money for drugs, alcohol and tobacco, they obviously have the money to buy food for their children's breakfast. Whet they need a different set of values. And I didn't hear values mentioned all day yesterday in the Democrat Convention.
To comment: mmostert@originalsources.com
To Subscribe to the Reagan Monitor, the newsletter that gives you news FACTS you can USE to make your life, and the world, better go to:
Start Your Subscription
