BY RUSSELL TURNER
OUT OF SIGHT AND OUT OF MIND
The more I watch current events, the more it is my observation that most American voters fail to understand the basic rule that there is no such thing as a free lunch. I hear countless politicians get up on their stump and promise all kind of programs and all of the good they are supposed to do, but what is very seldom mentioned is the sacrifice society must make to have those programs. Our people have been conditioned to hear only what they want to hear and to ignore the cold, hard facts and the cost involved. Whenever the costs are brought up the people supporting any issue will do their best to minimize the sacrifice that will have to be made. The problem that few want to admit to is the fact that all of these sacrifices, even though individually may be small, they do have a cumulative effect. An even bigger problem our citizens have gotten into is they don’t care who has to pay for more services as long as they are not required to contribute. I have the belief that what goes around eventually comes around; whether we want to admit it or not, growth of government and more regulations will always have an effect on all of us. The health care debate is an ongoing issue that we Americans need to get very serious about.
Many of the liberals are pushing for a single payer system. They like to put forth the image that all needs will be met and there will be no cost involved for the citizens. Our neighbor to the north “Canada” has a single payer system, and when you take an in-depth look at their system it is far from being free. According to the nonpartisan Fraser Institute, many Americans falsely believe that Canadians pay nothing for health care visits. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The Canadian system seems almost designed to hide costs from the people who pay them. Canadians end up paying through a complex web of taxes at both the national and local level. Canadians do not incur direct expenses for their use of health care, and because of that Canadians have a hard time determining the value of their contribution to public health care insurance. According to the Fraser Report a typical Canadian family of four will pay $12,057 for health care in 2017—an increase of nearly 70 percent over the last 20 years. Spending over a thousand dollars per month is hardly free healthcare. On top of that is the long waiting time for certain operations and treatments; in 2016 over 63,000 Canadians left the country to seek medical assistance elsewhere — usually the U.S. The Canadian system is nothing short of Socialism, before we accept the propaganda as fact we had better start using logic instead of raw emotion. Even in our country we have allowed ourselves to be deceived by hidden taxes and fees, we must not allow ourselves to go the same way as Canada.
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