Let’s get one thing straight here. When people start talking about “universal health care” they’re really talking about how one goes about paying for health care. The reality is that they’re not talking about health care at all. They’re talking about insurance versus out of pocket expenses.

I was on my honeymoon last year in Europe and was talking to some nice people from England. The discussion about the differences in our two countries health care came up when talking about the upcoming Presidential election. The man I was talking to was defending the universal system in England by saying that if you don’t have insurance in the US, an ambulance won’t even take you to the hospital, and if you do manage to get to the hospital they won’t even look at you until you prove you can pay for the medical care.

He couldn’t be further from the truth. In the US, as in England, no one is denied medical care in an emergency. The only difference is who foots the bill. In the US, if you have insurance, your insurance company pays, if not, you do. In England, the tax payers fund all the health care.

Oh yea, one other major difference is the bureaucrats that the British have to deal with in order to get medical care. We’re used to bureaucratic nonsense in the US when dealing with the government (long lines at the DMV, waiting periods for licenses and permits, etc.), but we don’t have life threatening injuries when dealing with the bureaucracy.

I never realized it until I spoke with this guy, but it seems like the British are fearful that without a universal health care system, they might not be able to get health care at all. The thought that individuals can pay for their own health care doesn’t seem to cross their mind. As a matter of fact, when I explained the insurance process in the US to this guy, he sort of had an “ah-ha” moment, almost like he never considered how easy it could be to simply pay for it yourself.

So what’s the point here? The liberals keep touting universal health care as the way to go in the US. No one stops to think that we already have universal health care. Anyone and everyone can walk into an emergency room and get treatment for their medical problems. It seems like liberals in the US are learning from the lessons learned from other countries like England. They are instilling a sense of fear into Americans that don’t have insurance, making them think that it will be impossible to gain access to health care without universal coverage.

For whatever reason these people don’t have health insurance, either if they can’t afford it or don’t want to pay for it, they still have access to health care if they need it.

Remember back in the late 1990’s, when the tobacco companies were sued?  They were ordered to pay over $240 billion to 46 states over the course of 25 years to fund the health costs associated with smoking and chewing tobacco.

According to an article on Townhall.com, roughly $80 billion has been paid out so far, and of that amount only 30% has been spent on health care programs, while only 6% was spent on smoking cesation programs.

So where did the other 70% go?  It must be sitting in escrow somewhere right?  Wrong.  The states have spent this money on things like museums, tax relief programs, and other non-health related programs.

The reason why, is that the states are not bound by any formula or criteria for spending the money.  They essentially said to trust them to do the right thing.  The right thing for who is the question we’re now left with.

It becomes a public outrage when big corporations like AIG “inappropriately” spend their bailout money to send their employees and agents on outings to Las Vegas.  But when the states do essentially the same thing, no one makes a peep.

Where’s the outrage?  Where are the demands to pay back the inappropriately used funds?  More importantly, why aren’t the tobacco companies suing the states for the misappropriation of their funds?

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http://conservativeposts.com/2009/04/lucky-strike-museum/

 

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