Happy Birthday Government Health Care

As Congress debates the destruction of the Health Care industry in the United States – let us pause to say “Happy Birthday” to Medicare and Medicaid, signed into law today in 1965. At 44 years old, these two government programs have ballooned to unimaginable levels since they were imposed on a trusting US population. Medicare consumed 16% of the Federal budget in 2007 ($440 Billion) and spent more than the taxes it brought in last year. It is on track to be completely insolvent by 2019. Medicare was imposed on the several States and estimates are the nearly 17% of State budgets are consumed by Medicare expenses in addition to the $204 Billion kicked in by the Federal government in 2008.
Medicare is covering 43 million Americans while Medicaid covers an estimated 49 million. These are the two programs which are designed to prevent having that 47 million uninsured Americans number that you keep hearing. That number has been bogus from the beginning and remains so.
At 44, how are Medicare and Medicaid doing? The government’s invasion of the free market has driven up prices and been the subject of widespread fraud, waste, and abuse. See today’s Washington Times article - Medicare fraud sting nets 30 (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/30/medicare-fraud-sting-nets-30/)
Americans are carrying around a huge Federal bureaucracy as well as mandated bureaucracies in their respective States. Americans have surrendered financial and other freedoms to achieve inefficient and wasteful coverage – and the democrats want to take over more of the system? They should be prosecuted now for the criminal way they have wasted the wealth and potential of citizens of this Nation. No more – get the government out of Health Care.
Conservative Resistance – Day 269