Cut Throat Politics on SCHIP

The only way for the Republicans to win this debate, in my opinion, is to after this Frost kid's family and go after all of them hard. This is a very dangerous strategy but it is the only hope they have of turning this debate.This debate has always been one of perception over logic and reason. A reasonable person would understand that socialized medicine has long ago failed everywhere it has been tried. John Stossel has done an excellent job of illustrating this. For instance, whatever we think of our own health care system do we ever do this?
TONY Blair yesterday faced a woman who pulled out SEVEN of her teeth afterfailing to find an NHS dentist.Great-grandmother Valerie Halsworth, 64, removed them with her husband’spliers. She pulled out a seventh tooth over the weekend before meeting the PMin Coventry yesterday. The cleaner, from Scarborough, North Yorks, has a gumdisease that causes her teeth to loosen.Do we ever have to wait 18 weeks just to see a specialist?
By December 2008, no patient referred to a consultant led hospital servicewill be allowed to wait longer than 18 weeks from referral to treatment.This will apply to all Trusts in the NHS, and represents the comingtogether of the various waiting time targets for the different elements ofhospital services. For the first time, in a similar way to our approach tocancer waiting times, the 18 week target will cover the whole patient pathway.From a patient's point of view, 18 weeks is a fairer and more inclusivetarget, and from the Trust's point of view, it is a more complete target thatshould enable us to effectively measure and manage all the timings of the carethat we deliver.It is about the right care, at the right time, of the right quality, without unnecessary delay. As much as being about speed, it is about quality, equality, efficiency and customer service.We haven't even talked about the fact that socialized medicine naturally reduces innovation. Stossel has done a great job of pointing this out as well
As I interview people for my health-care TV special scheduled to run on ABCthis September, I'm struck by how many hate the current semi-free-market systemAmerica has now. I say "semi" because it's not a free market when about half thehealth-care bill is funded by government. But it's still better than socialism.It allows for innovation like the creation of better drugs, pain-relieving jointreplacements, artificial hearts, LASIK eye surgery, and who-knows-what-else thatmay reduce pain and extend my life.Socialism will kill that, but people seem to like socialism, at least whenit's sold as free stuff from politicians. Wisconsin's Capital Times reports that"two-thirds of Wisconsin residents support the Democratic plan -- even whenpresented with opponents' arguments that it would be a 'job killer' that couldlead to higher taxes ... Said Sen. Jon Erpenbach, D-Middleton, one of the plan'ssponsors, 'Everything we have heard [against the plan], we put in the poll. Andit still comes back at 67 percent approval.It matters not because reason and logic won't win this debate. Raw emotion will. This family is a fraud and if the Republicans are to win, they must expose this family, not for the poor hard working folks they are, but for the family that affords a business, a home, private school, while still maintaining that they can't afford health insurance.Remember everyone, we all hate paying taxes. It takes until May before we work for ourselves. We are taxed every time we buy something, everytime we turn on the lights, the gas, and use our cell phone. We are taxed everywhere and the reason is because lots of people get a lot of free stuff. For for them, but we end up paying for it in higher taxes. That's what happens anytime a government program gets too big. It eventually winds up being fraudulent and people who send their kids to private school also are able to get free health care, or health care on the rest of us. As a result your $200 cell phone bill includes twenty dollars in taxes.The politicians always sell each of their new entitlement programs as being taxed by things like cigarettes or those that make $250K. That never works out and it doesn't because these programs get so big that there is fraud. That is what this family did. They committed fraud. The Democrats used them as poster children for SCHIP, and if the Republicans want to win this debate, they must turn them into the poster children of the fraud that always follows a bloated government program.