“There are reality checks when you put a fiscal note to a bill,” said House Speaker James Amann, a Milford Democrat. “There are some ideas that are so unattainable, so far out of reach, that you have to have a reality check.”
Mr. Amann was here referring to Universal Health Care, a euphemism for state socialized medicine. The price tag put on the legislative bill for Universal Health Care by the Connecticut’s non-partisan Office of Fiscal Analysis was a cool $18 billion, a number that sent chills up and down the spines of both legislators and the not easily spooked members of the Connecticut Business and Industry Association.
“Even we were quite shocked [by] the enormity of the cost. ... A lot of people are just scratching their heads and saying, ‘Wow!’” said CBIA associate council Eric George.
The $18 billion figure is just a touch more than Connecticut’s two year budget. But not everyone was scratching their heads and placing their hands over their wallets, mumbling as they did so, “Neither our wallets or our lives are safe while the legislature is in session.”
Mr. Donald Williams, the President Pro Tem of the state senate was raciocinating. “On the one hand,” he pondered, “$17 billion seems staggering, and it is. At the same time, the Connecticut Business Policy Council estimated that in Connecticut we spend $22 billion on health care costs each year - and that was in 2004 - for 3.5 million people.”
Mr. Williams is a fan of a single payer system, a euphemism for state socialized medicine. And he wasn’t ready to throw in the sponge. "No state has done what I would like to see us do,” said Mr. Williams, “which is to have a Medicare-for-all type system," a euphemism for state socialized medicine.
Williams added ominously, "It will be difficult to get it all done this year."
Mr. Williams never met a reality he didn’t like.
Mr. Amann was here referring to Universal Health Care, a euphemism for state socialized medicine. The price tag put on the legislative bill for Universal Health Care by the Connecticut’s non-partisan Office of Fiscal Analysis was a cool $18 billion, a number that sent chills up and down the spines of both legislators and the not easily spooked members of the Connecticut Business and Industry Association.
“Even we were quite shocked [by] the enormity of the cost. ... A lot of people are just scratching their heads and saying, ‘Wow!’” said CBIA associate council Eric George.
The $18 billion figure is just a touch more than Connecticut’s two year budget. But not everyone was scratching their heads and placing their hands over their wallets, mumbling as they did so, “Neither our wallets or our lives are safe while the legislature is in session.”
Mr. Donald Williams, the President Pro Tem of the state senate was raciocinating. “On the one hand,” he pondered, “$17 billion seems staggering, and it is. At the same time, the Connecticut Business Policy Council estimated that in Connecticut we spend $22 billion on health care costs each year - and that was in 2004 - for 3.5 million people.”
Mr. Williams is a fan of a single payer system, a euphemism for state socialized medicine. And he wasn’t ready to throw in the sponge. "No state has done what I would like to see us do,” said Mr. Williams, “which is to have a Medicare-for-all type system," a euphemism for state socialized medicine.
Williams added ominously, "It will be difficult to get it all done this year."
Mr. Williams never met a reality he didn’t like.
Comments
I have my own problems with insurance companies, but none of them require that they be run, through regulations, by governments that seem to have a problem making the trains run on time and educating children in urban ghettoes. Mussolini could have administered a single payer plan. He was hung in the end. Canadians, I assure you, are not satisfied with the kind of plan – expensive, burdensome – that has driven many of their doctors south of the border. American, as a rule, are an impatient people; they will not be willing to wait months for hernia operations.
Medicare is not a great success and the same with Husky Health because the doctors are not interested in being underpaid when they can take a patient whose insurance will pay better.
So whatever solution there is, has to occur within the context of the market. No one talks about food stamps kicking back money to the big bad grocery stores. It seems ludicrious to think that the government can do a better or more efficient job at running a grocery store than Wal-Mart and Stop & Shop- especially if you put people doped up on Whole Foods in charge. Why is this any different? J