One Man’s Health Care Fears
Mar 7th, 2010 by David Anderson
Written by Glen Asbury
Friday, 05 March 2010 16:14
Can anything possibly be written about health care that hasn’t already been hashed out ad nauseum? Since this time a year ago, we’ve been discussing why socialized medicine is disastrous, why America’s government can’t afford to finance all of the health care coverage a bill like this would require, why it couldn’t pass, why it nonetheless did, why it seemed to die and now has resurrected and why it may make it through the Senate, but run aground in the House…
The head swims.
I don’t claim to have anything new to contribute; I’m sure somewhere, either in cyberspace or on the printed page, similar concerns have probably been voiced. But as a husband and a father of three daughters, one with severe special needs, here is what I fear at this moment, if the bill passes:
The bottom line:
Fewer people will choose to make a career of medicine, which will cause untold ripple effects.
I have rarely been as troubled as I was when I read a Facebook conversation, probably 8 months ago now, about socialized medicine. One of the participants opined that it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to downplay the profit motive in the health care industry. You might assert that such an ivory towered notion could only emerge from the hallowed halls of academia and sadly, you would be right in this instance.
Our family doctor’s HMO already is refusing to take many patients with Anthem/Blue Cross/Blue Shields insurance because Anthem will only pay the Medicare baseline. (He consented to continue accepting us as patients in spite of our Anthem coverage, because of our relationship with him, which now spans a good number of years.) What will transpire when insurance companies go out of business because they can’t compete with government undercutting their prices under all of the enhanced powers government accrues as the price negotiator of first resort? Or alternatively, when more insurance companies begin to adopt Anthem’s tactics?
The profit incentive is central to the human condition. People excel when there is accomplishment for which to strive. Such achievement is codified in the possession of private property, of which money in the bank account is a key component. This is not to say that motivated workers cannot also be charitable. America’s record of voluntary local giving and worldwide monetary assistance is second to none, as all statistics show. But can anyone truly give from the heart if the donation is not voluntarily rendered? Indeed, is it not, in the end, forceful taxation if the dollars that are forfeited are done so on other than a wholeheartedly willing basis?
Why should doctors be any different, simply because they practice healing the sick? Most medical professionals, after all, spend around 10 years of their lives in arduous and expensive academic programs before they earn their first penny. What fool will continue to do this if not assured a comfortable income and standard of living upon graduation that will remunerate all of the costs absorbed in transit? (I’m fairly sure that the academic I observed making the comment about the “profit motive in healthcare” makes a high 5-figure salary, with a lush package of perks and didn’t have to go to an Ivy League-level school to obtain his/her current job.)
If fewer doctors practice medicine, costs will not only rise (and don’t kid yourself; they will), but treatment will have to be rationed. And yes, call it what you will, but death panels will result. Does anyone really believe that if the government is financing health care for an increasing percentage of the population, with a finite money supply, it will not decide what will be paid for and who will reap the benefits? It is simple economics: Tinker with the supply curve of anything and demand is always impacted.
(This reminds me of a discussion I had with an economist a couple of years ago when I expressed bewilderment at the inability of many politicians to grasp basic economic concepts. His reply? “Look at the industry most of them come from. The vast majority are attorneys.”)
If the President, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi really wanted to reform health care, they would implement measures that would increase competition on every conceivable front. Malpractice lawsuit reform and freedom to purchase insurance across state lines are great places to start.
But if this were really about reform, the President would have listened to the ever-growing majority by now and either forged a legitimate consensus of some kind or started over. With statists like Barack Obama, it is always about further government control, a far more apt description that the chameleonic term “reform” which can be imbued with any meaning with which the user determines to endow it.
One final question: If (pray God, it is so!) this monstrosity of a bill does not pass, how soon will we forget, in our bleary fatigue, that we have waged this fight and that we must continue to explain, with clarity and detail, to the next generation why we did it? One hopes that the residual memory lingers. Unfortunately, the lesson of history teaches that the reality should rather lead us to expect otherwise.
You’ll have plenty to explain when health care accounts for 17 percent of GNP and bankrupts the country quicker than the combination of Bush and Obama.
Two small points:
Education for a Dr. 4 years of College, 4 years of medical school, 5 years or residency, 2 years of fellowship. That will be 15 years my oldest son will travel to be a vascular surgeon. He is halfway through his surgery residency at Yale and has plans to practice surgery but to put considerable time (50%) into other ventures in Medicine (vein centers) where the government has no stranglehold.
Second, the lust for Obama and health care has nothing to do with you or me, the patient. If it was we could have several reforms right now on Medicaid, Medicare and Insurance which R’s and D’s would support. No, the fight is to expand government in to the area from which all things emanate, your health.
The only thing left to say is , “NO”.
Mike Protack
17% would not bankrupt the country. The percentage of GDP will adjust according to market forces. It only becomes a problem when the government pays for it and mandates certain coverages. Alternatives which may be lower priced then become discouraged.
In 2004 average physician net worth was $821K and average income was $200K.
Cry me a river. They are able to maintain that income only in a system that refuses to cover millions of people.
It would be an improvement to health care if those physicians who are only motivated by high incomes drop out and are replaced by more dedicated physicians with a more realistic business model and without the expectation of a luxurious lifestyle.
When I was a kid, physicians used to live in the same neighborhoods with working professionals and higher-earning tradespeople. I remember when they all moved out for luxury homes.
And besides, what happened to the conservative faith in supply and demand? If fewer people apply to medical school, the price will drop.
If a shortage of physicians due to reimbursements develops under a Govt health care plan, at least the system is under political control so voters can demand to raise payments.
Again, a very uninformed answer by someone very uninformed about health care.
Take a look at the educational requirements and tough process to become a Dr. That is supply and demand. They also work 30% more hours than the average worker.
Now for the egalitarian nonsense aside. The health care mess is propagated by the government reimbursement rates which are about 73% and 80% for Medicaid and Medicare. Imagine if all private services were priced like that?
Now for the possibility of a Dr shortage bringing down prices which is total nonsense and the belief that voters will demand more payments. The only way to increase payments is to raise taxes and given that out of $450 billion Medicare budget about $50 billion is fraud you can see where that idea won’t work.
Obama care is a fraud and the most stupid thing this failure of a President has ever proposed.
Mike Protack
Glen, this is major public policy, so let’s use accurate language. You start by saying “socialized medicine”, yet no one is proposing socialized medicine.
The only true socialized medicine we have in America is for our military, veterans hospitals.
Socialized medicine is Britains National Health Service. Britain instituted NHS around 1948. It was born out of a long-held ideal that good healthcare should be available to all, regardless of wealth.
The Government to own the hospitals, the buildings, the doctors are employed by the Government. NHS is viewed as very British success story – to the point were Prime Ministers of all political stripe from Conservative Margaret Thatcher to the current Mr. Brown of Labour all highly endorse the NHS, would not dare propose returning Britain to a system like ours. Today, even the ever more conservative Conservative Party issued a manifesto for the coming elections. This is from the latest Conservative manifesto:
Where We Stand: HEALTH
“As the party of the NHS, we will never change the idea at the heart of our NHS – that healthcare in this country is free at the point of use and available to everyone based on need, not ability to pay. Labour promised to save the NHS but today, despite the massive increase in spending, the gap in health outcomes between the UK and the rest of Europe has actually widened.” It goes on the propose measure to make NHS better. Here’s the link
http://www.conservatives.com/Policy/Where_we_stand/Health.aspx
there’s is an interesting video by their “Shadow Secretary of Health”
I provide this as a way to reduce the fear you might have about how alternative ways of doing things. Those of us who favor reform, want to make things better. No one is plotting to make things worse.
Here’s why nobody is jumping on the bandwagon of national Tort Reform: Each State makes their own malpractice law. Texas passed their own “Tort Reform”. Nationally, malpractice suits are way down from years ago. Many states have set up screening systems, pre-trial arbitration panels, even a new hospital policy – simple as it seems – just saying sorry, admitting negligence when thereby avoiding costly litigation. Medical negligence is one of the leading causes of death in America. So it’s not something you want to encourage. Any state can pretty do malpractice reform. There’s no burning need for a Federal mandate to trump State laws.
Respecting State legal authority is why there’s money in the reform bill targeted at funding State malpractice legal costs. So if you hear somebody saying “how about malpractice that will save us a bundle” – the answer is: States are doing it, there is money for more of it in the reform, but the idea of a sweeping National Malpractice Policy has been rejected.
Since 1975 California has had the most restrictive Malpractice laws. You can recover lost wages, medical costs, but there are caps on legal fees, and most importantly caps on non-economic damages. Pain suffering disability disfigurement is capped at $250,000. That means if a drunk, drug impaired, careless, or incompetent doctor botches a simple eye surgery rendering your child blind, you can sue to get paid for medical bills, legal expenses, but – for the child who spends his life blind – no more than $250,000. Just last week the Illinois Supreme Court struck down the Illinois malpractice cap of $500,000 as being an Unconstitutional breach, a “legislative attempt to mandate legal conclusions.” Basically saying hey – what’s wrong with a judge and jury of your peers for the drunk doc?
So don’t let anybody fool you into thinking there’s some magic Tort Reform silver bullet waiting to fix what’s wrong with health insurance. Note: In Tough Tort Reformed California, health insurance companies are raising individual rates for 700,000 people by up to 39%. Nobody is crying for Tort Reform, because they already have the most stringent in the Nation.
On the idea of more competition selling “across state lines” is another concept carefully considered but rejected for a variety of reasons ranging from:
a blizzard of new paperwork for medical professionals, the negative impact on the core concept of insurance – huge pools of healthy supported smaller pools of the less healthy, to the obvious States rights issue of bypassing local insurance commissioners. Selling across state lines means you set up shop under the Insurance laws of Mississippi, then solicit in Delaware without needing to comply with Delaware regulations. Regulations like how fast you have to pay claims.
A widely published study found paperwork red tape is the number one burden preventing primary care physicians, medical service providers in general from operating at a satisfactory level. Some estimate 30% of the healthcare workforce is engaged in paperwork. Adding “competition” means hundreds of new policies with hundreds of new forms calling for hundreds of new payment schemes. It would be totally nuts. The crushing paperwork problem now would be on steroids.
So, it not simple. The Tort Reform and Single State Licensing have not been ignored. They have been looked at a million different ways. The reason these ideas went nowhere when we Republicans controlled everything is the same reason they are going nowhere now – they are not good ideas. For those worried about big Government both Tort Reform and Selling across State Lines have the same common flaw. They require the Federal Government to take authority away from the States. The authority to decide how State courts handle medical lawsuits, the authority of each State to regulate health insurance companies through individual state insurance commissioners.
government reimbursement rates which are about 73% and 80%
73% and 80% of what?
I for one think 73% of the three-car garage, granite countertop, home theater, nanny, private school, European vacation lifestyle is plenty.
Mike, do you know who commits most of that fraud that cost Medicare billions? Doctors. Hospitals. Insurance companies.
You see this all the time:
“More than 50 doctors and health care executives have been indicted and dozens of them arrested by the FBI in a $50 million Medicare fraud case centered in Michigan, law enforcement officials said Wednesday.”
I know an eye doctor who just knocked down his old $2 million dollar beach house, and built a brand new $4.5 million mansion. He says he fixes eye problems. Does Medicare work.
As Mike would say about the President: Doctors are frauds. The system they work in is a stupid failure.
Don– I know a doctor who makes a lot of money by helping people gain sight. That is a stupid failure.
Me– More power to him. He should be rewarded for giving people a precious gift. How much money did Sandra Bullock make last year or James Cameron or Payton Manning or Colbe Bryant? Did they deserve it less than a doctor who makes the blind see or helps save sight?
More power to him.
I know a doctor who…
Republicans: Fighting statistics with anecdotes since 1976.
I hope the Socialist-Dems jam healthcare through. It will be political suicide. This summer, Republicans need only run on the issue of repealing the plan and the economy.
Since well before BO was elected, I predicted (on WGMD) that he would lead Republicans to victory in the House races this November. Now, the almost unbelievable has occurred; the possibility of regaining the Senate.
Thanks, BO, Harry, Nancy and your sychophants in big-media- for showing naive independents your true, socialist colors. We couldn’t have done it without you.
The crowning achievment of the teabagger backlash was to elect a pro-choice, pro-jobs bill Republican in Massachusetts. The backlash has peaked; it is all downhill for Republicans from here to the abyss. Please do run on repeal of health care.
David, my stupid failure remark was just mimicking the uncivil discourse of previous posts by Mike.
Your comparison of doctors to hollywood stars? Look at it this way, going to the movies is a totally voluntary free market experience. Having cancer is a whole different thing.
Would you like to apply you free market principles to the fire department? The poor man’s house burns while the rich man is saved? How would it that work for you? The fireman makes $500,000 a year but only saves people with fire insurance. Nuts. Fanatical. Economic Extremism, Islamic Extremism. Why all the extremism?
You give anons a bad name with your delusion. But it is funny to hear socialists/liberals/progressive keep repeating it with defeat after defeat hoping at some point it will come true for them.
Living in a constant state of denial that the country does not and probably will never want their uppity liberal thuggery is part of the mental illness they suffer. Eluding any accountability under any and all circumstances for any and all of their endless failures of socialist policy is almost genetic with them.
So assuming it passes, indeed we shall run on repealing the Frankenstein mutant Senate health care bill monstrosity you liberal trash will try to convince yourselves is as right as you are righteous. Your asses will be handed to you over and over and over.
So keep dreaming your liberal fantasies that the larger electorate wants or will for long stand for your fat grubby paws on their health care.
Obviously you are convinced everyone will just fall into line with your sky is falling fearmongering your piggish sense of entitlement mentality your deceitful rhetoric and the repulsive liars leading your charge.
This fight is only just getting started, nonny.
Ever notice the anti folks never say a word about the nuts and bolts of how we can improve. Nothing about ways to get group rates for small business. Nothing about how we fix the problem with pre-existing denials? Nothing the percentages. The details.
It’s all just fear paranoia directed against political labels. Somebody says: How about an exchange where small business can buy as a group? Answer: socialist liberal insane deceitful fantasy. Wonder what causes that?
This fight was started a long time ago. It’s about making things better.
Ever notice how the folks like above commenter just assume it is their place to direct and control “how things improve”?
They just can’t believe anyone doesn’t share their twin beliefs that they want taken as assumed by all (or else your opposition is not serious or legitimate) :
1. That they or their political messiahs can ‘improve things’ and
2. It is not only their place but their right to use government power to enforce their statist notions of ‘improving things’.
Take government coercion and confiscation out of the equation and we can have productive debate all day long about improving things.
I am sure you will suddenly find yourself short of any answers that have any nuance or creativity since you only have one answer at the core of it all : state coercion.
Nice try to frame the questions entirely on your terms and then negatively cast anyone who doesn’t answer on them but you fail.
I do agree with you that the fight for liberty against creeping government power wielded by self appointed “thing improvers” has been going for a long long time. See how I can frame the questions too?
anon, what’s up with “the creeping government”? Not sure I understand who/what you mean? I’m just saying I want somebody to stop the Golden Rule Insurance Company from doubling my insurance payment. What should I do call a cop? Who do I go to for help? I called Golden Rule all I get is a recorded message. My rate doubled in five years, now it went up 15% this year. I shopped all over.
Feel free to do business with someone else. Since when is the government supposed to provide you an enforcer for what you want but can’t seem to find in your private health insurance decisions?
It’d sure be nice to make the government stop my employer from only paying me half of what I deserve just like you want someone to “stop” your insurance company from offering you their services on terms you don’t like or should I say for for offering you their services on terms you don’t like. Where does it end?
You sound like a petulant child fixated on what it wants even if that means forcing others to force others to give it to you (at gunpoint when you get down to the bottom of government coercion).
To paraphrase PJ O’Rourke – if you think health care is expensive now just wait until it’s “free”.
OOPS “or should I say for not offering you their services on terms you want”
Make health insurance like car insurance- highly competitive.
B. Hussein’s goal is to bankrupt private insurance companies. Then the feds take-over, just like Canada and Europe.
I wonder why so many Canadians, who have ‘free’ health care at home, come to the U.S. for treatment?
True, insurance companies sometimes deny coverage for some treatments, surgery, etc. The feds, under Medicare, Medicaid or the V.A. don’t?
Answer us, BO- the feds don’t deny treatment?
Anon, it appears you’re anti-Government of the United States of America phobia is getting the best of you.
Only a heathen would believe the Founders envisioned a dog eat dog Nation devoted to money changing. You have it all wrong.
I’ve been guaranteed the right to petition the Government when I think my liberty is being threatened.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, 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. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men . . .”
I expect government to live up to that. Whether it’s Jihadists, or Bernie Mafoff, or insurance monopolies – you got it right – I want government help.
People who think Government is bad have broken faith with America. Broken faith with our spiritual roots. Replacing the God of our ancestors with a new heathen God – Capitalism.
Here’s one example of how heathen anti-Government crusades led us to abandon the true God of the Founders.
The original 13 states had strict usury law. Laws limiting the amount of interest lenders could charge. Usury law flowed from deeply help religious beliefs seeing debt as a form of servitude directly conflicting with individual liberty. The debtors prisons of the Old World were proof enough that lenders, permitted to rule would impinge on our new found life liberty the pursuit of happiness. So one of the first things the original states did was cap interest rates.
Twenty-five years ago for the first time in our history, along came the modern anti-Government heathens, lacking the ancestral sense of spirituality liberty, justice – thinking liberty meant abolishing the Usury Law for lenders. They ushered in this New Age of extreme indentured debt. Even now they fight efforts to rein in the Lenders. Effort to liberate the the debtors are fought tooth and nail as “fighting big government”.
Now we have anti-Government Anon, assertin that if a private insurance company wants to take half of my earnings in exchange for medical service for my child, that is the American Way. I say No. That is the way of the heathen, the worshipper of the money God. The American who has lost his way.
You’re quite full of platitudes, emotional appeals and self righteousness think123.
Doesn’t make you right nor give you the rights to expand your blessed government to the extent you hide.
So let me try an acronym on you since the gubmint revolves around them– take government coercion and confiscation out of all your grand platitudes and superior moral compulsion to act now!!! or P.I.S.S. O.F.F.
It’s just that simple. I think your desire for ever expanding state collectivism to suit your highfalutin personal moral sense or anyone else’s schemes for the labor and property of others is a disgusting affront to all things holy and all things pure and all things free.
Do please spare us your evangelical flourishes about the “American Way” as if your temple of state power worship has some cosmic level of worth. They are quite nauseating.
“to the extent you have”
Anon, what about the Founders usury law? Any opinion? Do you agree with the concept?
You misunderstand where I’m coming from. Of course we all know Government can threaten liberty. That’s Freedom 101. But there’s a difference between Totalitarianism and the FDA inspecting ground beef. No? I am against Communist Collectivism, but I like this new Credit Card Act. Okay?
Get some nuance dude. You’re missing all the other forces that threaten liberty. That’s why Big Government had to end slavery. Private citizens had the idea that “freedom” meant one person could own another person as property. Sell his kids for a profit. Now that’s what you call a free market!
I’m not trying to sell you on how great Big Government is. Just encouraging you to not be all one sided. There is a forest. There are trees. Chill. Look around.
Don’t be such a slave to a one way set of beliefs. You can hate government and hate other stuff too. This health care industry is sucking us dry. I want to get in there mess with them. I write my Congressman. I want laws. I’m a citizen of the U.S. of A. I know my rights. I don’t want my life my grandchildren’s life, my career, my liberty to be steered by where I can get health insurance. Work at a bank your covered. Work for Government your covered.
The deck is stacked against freedom loving people who really want to live free beyond that Corporate Government Matrix. We don’t just blab about theoretical freedom. We are fighting the way healthcare is rigged to suck us into the Matrix. Conservative in Britain did it in 1946. The current Ultra Conservative Manifesto in Britian 2010 reaffirms the ideal that medical care should be among the basic rights of citizens regardless of wealth.
No collective. No gulag. No Communism. No all knowing Government. I just want MY Government to do the job protecting my liberty and make sure I get some justice. I want access to healthcare. I refuse to surrender my freedom to a Corporation or the Government in exchange for hospital care.
Ben Franklin decided a poor man’s house should not burn while a rich man is saved merely to pay homage to market theory. That’s why we have Public Fire Departments. We all pay taxes, putting out fires is free at the point of service for all citizens. Would you like to get the Government out of that? Maybe have it cost $500 a month to have fire department coverage? How much is having your child rescued from a fire worth in the free market? Everything. That’s why it’s public not private.
Your house burns. Your wealthy neighbor house is saved. That’s the dog eat dog you are advocating.
And don’t be so against morality. There is lot of that in Christianity. Look it up, morality is not bad, it just means:
“Principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior.”
I’m Catholic. I was taught greed, lust, envy, are sins we need to beware of. You would have a hard time convincing me the Jeffersons Franklins were not Christians. That may sound pussy to you, promoting the general welfare is a very cool concept.
So, any opinion on Usury Law?
Jeebus you sure have a talent for conflating your desire for grabbing health care subsidies from other people’s labor and resources into the same realm as collective functions best handled by government. You would conflate individual health care into a function – like military or firefighters – best carried out through government uniformity. On the side of this is the belief that individuals’ deciding for themselves with the most choices (NOT MANDATES) is somehow the least efficient or effective means to individual health care.
You seem totally oblivious if not ignorant that there are huge distortions in the health care system flowing from government meddlings already long underway. When you for once acknowledge all the unintended costs and consequences and unsustainability of the existing government welfare health care programs maybe you will have a shred of intellectual honesty even as you argue for their massive expansion.
Are you aware for example that only 3% of Medicare reimbursement claims are even reviewed much less substantiated by an actual bureaucrat before they are paid within 30 days of their submission? This is an incredible recipe for waste and fraud with slim to no chance of ever getting caught. That’s just Medicare. One can only imagine if they take over the whole system. We will have skads more of inefficient lumpkin bureaucrats who still barely scratch the surface of these automated giveaways rife with potential for cost inflation and fraud.
Also you obviously believe everyone is being bled dry to obtain health insurance or care. I don’t see this with anyone in my sphere of the world —- and I mean anyone.
In my view you have had bad experiences with health care as your fate in this life – so your answer to your own problems and past issues with health care is to enslave the rest of us and the future of us to pay for your shortfalls or “what you want” while cloaking it all as some humanitarian imperative.
Bull. Shit. On. That. I will take the imperfect individual based free choice system over your spread the wealth around and let government force me into ANY insurance payments or programs of health that unaccountable denizens government decides best suits fit for me.
I am about fed up with anecdotal sob stories that are used to justify turning the exceptions to good health care outcomes into the measure by which the system should be manipulated wholesale. For every person with a health care horror or bad luck there are dozens who have done just fine with their own health decisions.
People of your mindset — the Constance Dogooders of the world – should for once grasp that life comes with no guarantees and it will never ever be the utopia you have in mind for all. Yours or any of your holy politicians’ narrow lenses of understanding can never grasp diversity and choice when the power you seek requires uniformity and coercion.
As I wrote before it’s really just that simple and it is why you must be stopped by all means necessary including civil disobedience to any government coercion.
Also I ask again– please spare us the grandiose evangelism. Your pleadings have no more gravitas or moral authority than any other collectivist who wants us to believe their incursions into private life – ultimately at gunpoint – are all just in the nature of selfless public service and altruism.
That is just horse dung glittered with fool’s gold.
So you can’t grasp the concept of Usury Laws?
Anon, anybody in your “realm” on Medicare and Social Security? No parents, no grandparents? Have you told them they are sucking of the tit of collectivism? You have a better plan for them? Being anti-Government is not a plan. It’s a phobia.
Civil disobedience? How about big national elections every 2,4,6 years? Remember how that works? Elections? In 2008 120 million voted. Most ever. Maybe you don’t even like Government sponsored elections? Everybody too dumb for smart guys like you?
We’ll see what your thoughts are when these big elections continue going the opposite way from your big omni government love obsession.
Surely you won’t stand in the way of dismantling your welfare state right?
We can worry about fixing the messed up runaway troika of Medicare Medicaid and Social Security the moment we stop the huns from imposing another bigger crazed Ponzi welfare scheme on the rest of the economy by way of all health care.
God you people are obsessive megalomaniacs. We just want out of your pit.
We just want out of your pit.
Costa Rica beckons…
Some see a “welfare state”, I see Christianity at work fulfilling the dream of the Founders.
I want to hear Anon talk about Usury Law.
The Founders and the original Usury Laws? Really gets to the heart of the original role of government prior to the 1980′s. Thomas Paine and those guys had a lot to say about debt, lenders, the obligation of the new Government to jump in there. Heck, that’s half the reason they invented a whole new Government – to help folks get liberated and happy. Not just liberated from a King. Liberated from economic injustice as well. They escaped a rigid Class system with debtor prisons.
We will not permit a Class system to rear it’s ugly head in the United States. That’s why we make sure wealth is distributed. The Government is the instrument by which we secure social and economic justice. It’s sort of a Blessing Of Liberty things.
Oh Lordie, now the founders are really Marxists right? And not the Groucho and Harpo Duck Soup variety either eh Mr. turtle soup.
Really that last turtlesoup comment was such a complete steaming crock of crap I can’t even begin to respond.
Let me make it simple for you to respond. The Founders believed they had to control consumer interest rates so predatory lenders would not take advantage of people. Adam Smith agreed. You with the program or not?
Anon, worrying about the gap between rich and poor does not mean a person is a Communist. Every American Economist including conservatives are well aware of the danger presented by extreme gaps in wealth. Historically, that is how the Marxist came to power. Too many poor people you get revolutions. French. Russia. Cuba. China. That’s what did it. A few rich, too may poor. We work to make sure that does not happen here. American’s Great Middle Class did not just happen. We built it. The Inheritance Tax was discussed in Colonial Times as a way to prevent too much wealth from accumulating in the hands of a few families. Everybody from Jefferson on pondered how we could avoid aristocracy, plutocracy. There’s a reason those words existed way before there were Marxists. It’s not a Commie Red thing. Just economics, social policy theory.
We want to make sure one guy does not win the grand prize of Capitalism, ends up owning everything. So we do little things to bust things up. Spread the wealth. It’s very American.
Anyone else want to take a crack at this twisted revisionist drivel?