Not so much obama

efending obama with the argument that, "he's just trying to help" is like defending a 4 year old that goes into the kitchen while mom is making dinner and destroys the place - throwing flour and sugar and pots and pans and silverware everywhere (not to mention pooping his pants) - and not criticizing or reprimanding him, much less defending him.

i do believe that it is indeed ignorant to compare obama to hitler simply because he is not sinister and evil like hitler. i believe he is well intentioned, and is adamantly pursuing what he believes is right for the people.

however, with regard to government-run health care systems, all you have to do is look at the inefficiency of any government-run program. look at how many programs that are already in place that are cutting budgets, look at how many programs are in debt, look at how much waste is poured into them and how little the people actually reap of them (as a ratio of how much resource is invested to how much actual benefit goes out to the public), and you can see that a government-run program is, in the long run, economically unsustainable. there is no sounder evidence of this pursuit's inevitable failure than the current examples of medicare, medicaid, social security, etc.

to fix the problem? in my mind, there is really only one true solution to the problem. people need to pay cash for their health care to whatever extent their incomes allow, and leave the insurance industry out of the picture entirely with exceptions only made to major incidents and the chronically ill. by the nature of selection, in this way, the medical->insurance->materials (as a trickle-down effect) industries would be forced to be more competitive with their costs of services. the most significant reason for cutting insurance out of the picture is that there is no reason for a middle-man, third-party agent to be capitalizing off of your health and quality of life. this expense should be purely between the health care provider and the individual.

and to service the low-income populous? invest in more income-based clinics (emphasis placed on income-based so the wealthy could not abuse these facilities). enlist freshly graduated students who want to pay off student loans to work these clinics. to me, this makes sense for so many reasons: 1) judging by americans' current aptitude for health and dependence/burden on the health care system, it is a horrible investment. like i said before, this is not economically sustainable. 2) realistically, we have nothing to invest into this system to begin with. i have heard a wide variety of numbers tossed around about what our current deficit is standing at these days, but never have i heard that it was in the positive. there is nothing financially sound to back up an initiative of this caliber. 3) as an individual, this would still grant you access to health care, no matter how bad-off you were financially, but it would put the responsibility into the individual's hands of their decision-making pertaining to their quality of care that they receive. 4) this system is dependent on an employed and tax-paying population. i heard on the radio yesterday that the nation-wide unemployment rate is upwards of 17% now, up from 12% the last time i heard it reported. that being said, a government-run insurance program, albeit nonprofit or otherwise, is no less an industry than any other business. it needs cash flowing into it in order to function properly, and with an unstable inflow of cash (not to mention a bleak outlook on future economic prospects), again, it is an unsound investment.

i could probably rant on and on, but the underlying message here is that many americans are upset because it's simple. they can hypothetically add up in their minds that just like with anything else, if there's not enough money being poured into the system, corners have to start being cut, and with health care reform, those corners would potentially be their well-being, which is where the reference to hitler comes in: the power of one's well-beling, placed in the hands of a distanced, governing body.