When the Democrats Say They Want Universal Health Care, They Mean They Want to Kill the Feeble

My wife was just watching a television show which depicted an Oregon man who was dying of cancer. He asked his physician for a treatment of chemotherapy, but the physician demurred. The hospital sent the man a letter to the effect that although he could not be given chemotherapy because his condition was too advanced, he could take advantage of Oregon's "Death with Dignity" law and commit assisted suicide.  Besides the moral issues involved in suggesting to a patient that he commit suicide, the Oregon law has serious implications for future decades.

The Baby Boom generation failed to see any progress in its economic welfare because the Federal Reserve Bank debased the dollar and transferred much of the nation's wealth to financial interests.  The result is that there has been inflation, and the real hourly wage has not increased since 1970.  In the days of laissez faire capitalism, when there was no income tax, the average American's real hourly wage increased two percent per year. This continued through the 1960s, when government spending was less as a portion of GDP than it is now taking into account all three levels of government. After 1970, when restraint on the Federal Reserve Bank was eliminated because Richard M. Nixon abolished the gold standard, facilitating rapid government expansion, income inequality has expanded and the real hourly wage has been stagnant for the first 40-year period in American history.  America is no longer the land of opportunity because of the Federal Reserve Bank, high income taxes and big government, a system that has facilitated wealth transfer by staunching small scale capital development and transferring wealth from wage earners to property owners.

One effect of the Fed-generated  wage stagnation is that Americans no longer have the wealth necessary to provide themselves with health care.  Until 2009 the system had permitted the average American to retain the illusion that he would be able to afford health care.  The two Obama health care laws expanded access to health insurance by cutting Medicaid and establishing mechanisms that will increasingly reduce care. The average American will no longer be able to afford care at the level that his or her parents had it.  Although more Americans will be able to gain low-cost treatments of the kind that Michael Moore celebrated in his movie Sicko, when he extolled the Cuban medical system, fewer Americans will have access to the kind of care that Moore ridiculed: the sewing on of fingers that had been cut off in an accident.  Replacement of fingers is likely not available in Cuba and likely not available in countries with public health care systems. Such systems ration care using bureaucratically designed rules. They save money by reducing care of the type that Moore complained was absent in the American system.  In fact, the pattern is the reverse. Elaborate treatments are less likely to be available in a socialized health care system.

By expanding care and taking steps toward socialization of medicine, the Democrats have insured that Americans will receive reduced care.  As well, we can expect a second pattern.  The institution of murder in place of treatment, as we see with the Oregon law. The Democrats, in the name of providing universal care, are going to substitute murder for care, with Progressive Republicans marching in synch. This is necessitated by the  big government policies that have led to declining real hourly wages, the socialization of medicine, and the failure of Progressivism.