The right-wing really does have it figured out. The problem with health care has nothing to do with insurance premium costs growing faster than worker's earnings, or drug companies with pockets full of legislators and piles of money for advertising, it has nothing to do with Doctors or Hospitals jobbing a flawed system by prescribing expensive but unnecessary procedures for maximum payback. No, no, no my dear friends... it's because we have failed to release the health care system into the loving clutches of the free market system. When the finest health care providers in the world are forced to compete for your hard earned dollar, only then will we realize the solution to this crisis.
In fact, I'm so convinced that this is the case that I offer the logical extension to this argument for your perusal...
I want you to take a trip with me to imagination-land. This is the place I want our right-wing friends to venture. The free market at its finest. You are sitting in your comfortable home (everyone has one because health care has gotten so cheap) enjoying a raucous episode of Fox News. You smell smoke. Yes, definitely smoke. You peek out the front window to see that your garage is fully engulfed in flames. What do you do? Well... in this free market economy we have done away with the socialist, fascist, government-controlling 911 system. You'll be god-damned if they'll have any knowledge or say in what burns on your property or how you put it out. Honestly... the old department was basically comprised of lazy government workers anyway, right? 1-800-AAA-FIRE ... you just hope the call center isn't in Hyderabad, India.
How about police protection? Pfah! This is best left to an army of separate, but very dedicated private security firms all competing for your hard-earned dollar with slick ads and glossy magazine advertisements. The public doesn't need protection... you need protection from the public, and it is your right to decide who best to provide that protection for you... not the government. My guys? ... they carry 50 round banana clips. If you mess with me you won't just be dead... you'll be dead 50 times (and because I paid for five years up-front I got one free "concrete shoe" disposal. Now that's competition for you).
And then the biggest entitlement program of all. That money sucking, government controlled black hole we call the United States Military. We all know how our excellent medical system will go down the shitter if we dare to make health care a tax-funded basic human right. People would be flocking to Albania for brain surgery for cryin' out loud. Imagine the rise in quality and innovation we would see if we just handed the protection of U.S. interests at home and abroad over completely to private companies. No more government employees fiddling around over in Pakistan screwing up complex military operations. We would let the free market produce teams of highly skilled operatives that would do it cheaper and better. Let the citizens decide who we want to hire to take out mass-murdering terrorists... not the government.
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All sarcasm aside. Take every opportunity to tell your local tea party whacko that "of the people, by the people and for the people" means that the government is us. The government isn't some independent entity that does things to us. We do have a say in how these things are done. It's called "voting". Everyone in this country should get regular, high quality health care. Screw insurance. We pay for it the same damn way we pay for the best military on the face of the planet... with taxes. If Bill Gates' house starts on fire, the same folks that put that fire out are the ones that put out the fire at Bubba Gates' trailer house four miles away. Bill pays a shitload more taxes than Bubba, but they get the exact same service... and nobody bitches about that, you don't hear the tea party faithful complaining that our fire fighters are sub-standard either.
So the next time your favorite right-winger bloviates about health care and free markets... ask them how willing they would be to extend that theory to everything else we consider basic and essential protections that are currently managed by the big-bad government.