Dear Freedom-lover:
If I lived in your country, I would be a Trump supporter, too. I have lived in a left-leaning society for most of my life. You can’t imagine the evils that are accepted up here. For example, we condone same-sex marriages and doctor-assisted suicide and have decriminalized the terrible wickedness of abortion. Worse than any of these, we are not permitted to carry hidden lethal weapons when we go to church.
I admire you for taking such a strong stand against creeping socialism. I can understand how fearful you are of Washington taking over your health care system. I’ve been there. For most of my life I have endured the evils of socialized medicine.
It all began before I was born when rural municipal councils (which are the equivalent of your county governments) began to hire doctors to care for their taxpayers. Every taxpayer received the same level of service regardless of the amount of taxes paid. This insidious arrangement ignored the reality that some people pay larger tax bills because they are more successful farmers than the slackers who expected others to look after them. (Success, as we both know, deserves its rewards.) Also, there was usually only one family physician in each rural municipality. This limited the choice of doctors to the one who was being paid by the municipality. I think you are right in believing that if government-run health care comes to the United States your choice in doctors will be limited to only those approved by Washington.
My parents didn’t pay taxes in the rural municipality and, as a result, had to pay both the doctor and hospital when I arrived. I think this was entirely proper. My conception was the result of a decision made by only two people and not the whole community. Honest people expect to pay for the results of their own decisions. We both know that under a government-run health care plan, honest, hard-working citizens will be forced to pay for improvident, sex-mad people who are multiplying like flies.
When I was a teenager, the situation worsened. The avowedly socialist government of the day enacted a bill that made it unnecessary for any resident of the province to pay for a stay in a hospital. The government paid all bills out of tax revenues. I think we can both see the fallacy in this. Instead of staying at home and looking after themselves as the sturdy pioneers had done, freeloaders crowded into the hospitals at great cost to honest taxpayers and the economy as a whole.
The most frightening triumph of socialism came a few years later, when the government of the province decided to pay everybody’s doctor bills, out of tax revenues. I am now in the unhappy position of not having to pay for medical, surgical, hospital and diagnostic services. For any true lover of freedom, this is stifling. It makes me feel like a pauper.
The latest intrusion into my privacy by government occurred when my province decided that I would pay only $20 for each prescribed drug, regardless of how much each drug really costs. I think we both know what this means. I am forced to use generic drugs rather than the brand-name products I deserve.
I think if the Obama plan continues in the United States, private insurance companies will not be driven from the health care field entirely. They will still make a little bit of money. I know this because I have private policies that fill the small gaps in the government plan. I even have funeral insurance. My funeral is already paid for. Talk about cradle-to-grave protection, eh?
This saps my independence. Although it makes me feel useless, I am not entirely defeated. I am reasonably confident the funeral will take place before government enters the field and the cost of funerals is capped and I am forced to occupy the same plain coffin as the freeloaders use.
Canada’s acceptance of the blandishments of socialism has something to do, I think, with our sacred constitutional documents. Americans are assured of “life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Canadians are assured of “peace, order and good government.” Canadians don’t pursue happiness, they wait for government to provide it. We can attain peace and order here, but good government is a pipe dream, as it is everywhere in the world. I think we both know Canadians have no collective backbone.
I will not deceive you by saying Canadians are unhappy with their health care system. The only glaring fault they find in it is that there seem to be more high-salaried administrators than lower-salaried front-line caregivers. This seems unavoidable. Bureaucrats pop up like weeds everywhere, even in private industry and even in the United States. It seems comical that governments trying to get rid of bureaucrats always create another bureaucracy to do it.
I believe, as you do, that we should look after ourselves and not fear death or bankruptcy as a result of unaffordable medical treatment. These catastrophes happen to other people and they deserve it because they are not honest and industrious enough to see to their own well-being.
We need to return to the stubborn independence of our pioneer forebears. After all, and as you very well know, the west was won by brave white men who displaced the savages and began to turn the underused land to good Christian purposes.
I salute you for your brave stand against a socialist dictatorship.
Yours truly, Nemo
