Health Care Not a Right, Ron Paul Says…
July 22, 2009 | General, Healthcare Debate
President Obama is getting ready to push his health care reform plan in a prime time press conference tonight. He’s hoping to win over the American people as well as members of Congress who are skeptical about the plan.
Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) has been a very vocal critic of the president’s plan. He spoke to Kiran Chetry on CNN’s “American Morning” Wednesday.
Kiran Chetry: You’re a physician as well and I’m sure that you have a lot of thoughts on this issue as we debate health care. You oppose President Obama’s reform plan. You favor giving Americans control of their health care. Does it boil down to two different philosophies over who should get health care coverage? Do you believe not everyone can expect free or low cost health care?
Ron Paul: Yeah, I think there’s a lot to that. But I come from the viewpoint that the most important thing we do is preserve the doctor/patient relationship, which we do not. For the past 30 years or so we’ve had a lot of government involved. We have veterans care, we have Medicare, we have Medicaid and we also have a lot of people getting private insurance. People having private insurance are not all that unhappy. So what are we doing now or at least Obama is proposing that we turn the people that have service on insurance and make them join the governmental programs that everybody is unhappy about.
So it doesn’t make any sense. It’s a total failure to run anything by a bureaucracy. It always costs more and the services are always less favorable. So for us to pursue government solutions to a problem the government created sort of reminds me of the T.A.R.P. bailouts. You know what we do financially. So medical bailouts by more government when government created our managed care system of 35 years will only make things much worse.
Chetry: One of the things we’ve talked about is whether or not independents are backing this. There seems to be some eroding support because of concerns about whether or not we can afford it, whether or not the timing is right. Even though there is that apprehension right now about whether or not we can afford it most do agree that we need to do something about health care. Is there a Republican alternative out there that makes more sense in your opinion?
Paul: Oh, yeah. I think so. I think we should pursue the idea that the patient get control through the medical savings accounts and deductions so that you can deduct everything. The biggest problem is the misunderstanding about insurance. They talk about we need to give everybody insurance. You can’t give people insurance – you don’t expect from your car insurance to be able to buy gasoline and do all your repair bills and that’s not insurance. And this is not insurance either. Insurance would be major medical to take care of the big problems.
That is one of the basic problems. As far as costs goes, they’re estimating $1 trillion or $1.5 trillion in the midst of this crisis no wonder people are starting to wake up a little bit. Because the money just isn’t there. The one thing for sure, is if you look at every other previous program by government, if they proposed that say the prescription drug program would cost $49 billion, well, it might turn out to be $150 billion. It’s always much more so if they’re saying $1.5 trillion for this, be sure it’s going to cost two or three times that much.
Chetry: What do we do, though, about this problem with, you know, uninsured children, many people uninsured – the millions? Your state by the way, according to the United Health Foundation survey, ranks 46 out of 50 in terms of overall health. And one of the biggest challenges for your state right now is that there’s a high percentage of children in poverty and a big uninsured population. So, there you are opposing this, your state seems to be in dire straits when it comes to this situation. What’s the solution for Texas?
Paul: Well, one thing you have to do is say, why do people come up short and why is the cost so high? It’s inflation and it’s a government management of the health care system that is at fault. But even though I have my ideal system I would like to see with the government out completely because that would be a much better system, that’s not going to happen. I’m realistic. One thing we shouldn’t do is pay for it with money created out of thin air. So what I would do in a transition, I’ve talked about this a whole lot, is cut spending somewhere and take care of the very people you’re talking about. Because you don’t want to cut, under these conditions, medical care from poor people who have been dependent or the elderly.
But I would cut from overseas spending. I would cut from these trillions and trillions of dollars that we have spent over the years and bring our troops home so that we can finance it. A first, very, very minor step was done yesterday by cutting the F-22. I applaud Obama for that. We don’t need one system removed – we need to change our foreign policy. Then we could afford the health care that is necessary to tide us over until we have come to our senses and believe freedom can deliver medical care much better than a bureaucracy in government. You have to deal with the problem of inflation as well because that’s why people find that medical care costs too much.
Popularity: 2% [?]
RSS
Comment by Norris Hall July 23, 2009
A parable
One day a poor pregnant woman came to Ron Paul
“Oh, wise one” cried the woman. “My husband has abandoned me and my children for another woman. I cannot support this child in my belly. I want to have an abortion. ”
Ron Paul gazed upon the poor woman and replied “No. Woman. The baby in your belly has a right to life. Go and have your baby and forget about an abortion”
So the woman had her baby.
The baby was born gravely sick.
It needed a doctor and expensive medical care.
So the woman returned to the Congressman
“Oh wise one. My baby is sick. But I am poor. I have no means of support and no health insurance. My child needs expensive medical care.”
Ron Paul took the the poor woman’s hands in his.
“Health care is not a right. My child. It is a good.” He reminded her . “You chose to marry an unreliable man. You chose to be a wife and mother instead of learning a trade to support yourself. We are all responsible for our choices. If your child is sick and you cannot afford a doctor you have no one to blame but yourself.
The child died after much suffering
Comment by LibertyMage July 31, 2009
Ron often talks about how he never turned away patients when he worked in a catholic hospital. He also talks about how regulation works against organizations that try to offer charitable health care. Your parable is nothing more then a lie.
Comment by Gordon August 6, 2009
This is a lot of baloney.
1. Ron says, “the most important thing we do is preserve the doctor/patient relationship, which we do not. For the past 30 years or so we’ve had a lot of government involved. We have veterans care, we have Medicare, we have Medicaid”
What about private insurance companies that interfere with the doctor/patient relationship? I had to leave my family doctor when my employer changed health insurance providers and my doctor wasn’t a provider under the new plan. That doesn’t happen under Medicare — no doctor is excluded. Private insurers dictate what doctors you can see and what is covered.
2. Ron says, “People having private insurance are not all that unhappy.” Most people who file for bankruptcy are bankrupt because of medical bills — and most of these people have health insurance! These are very unhappy people!
3. Ron says, “So what are we doing now or at least Obama is proposing that we turn the people that have service on insurance and make them join the governmental programs that everybody is unhappy about.”
Obama is not advocating that we all join the government plan. He just wants a government plan so that people will have a choice and so that private plans will have some real competition and incentive to reduce costs. Right now the only thing private insurance is incentivized to do is deny coverage so they can maximize profits.
Comment by Beth August 11, 2009
I do not know about Ron Paul. But if he said he never turned away a patient when he worked in a Catholic church, I need to ask him, how big was the bill if they were uninsured. He may not have charged them, but I know from fact that the hospital did charge them and at a much higher rate.
My husband was just in a Catholic hospital for 2 1/2 days, 24 hours on a ventilator. He is uninsured. Total cost just for the hospital–$27,000.00
So tell me Ron..how much did it cost the uninsured. And have you practiced lately in a hospital?
Comment by Jill (High Blood Pressure Remedy) January 11, 2010
There is a lot of talk and that is all it is. The gov’t is flacid. Pro – Paul, Pro – Obama, doesn’t matter. No one is really getting what they want except those with the deepest pockets who can fund changes in gov’t policy. It isn’t just health care that’s broken, the whole gov’t is run like a circus.
Comment by Hemorrhoid Relief January 16, 2010
At present, health care is a privilege in the U.S. and not a right. Those who believe that health care should be a universal human right have an uphill battle. The number of homeless people throughout our nation suggests that we do not consider basic shelter to be a right either. The fact that some people still do not get enough to eat suggests that food too is often seen as a privilege. It becomes harder to argue that health care is a basic human right, when we do not seem to feel the same way about food or shelter.
Comment by John Smith March 9, 2010
Healthcare is part good part service just like everything else people buy. There’s really no difference and people only perceive the difference because it’s so expensive and so necessary. This system wasn’t created yesterday. It is an ugly creature of government that grew out of years and years of tampering with the economics of healthcare. The government started by giving a leg up to insurance companies so that more people would be forced to buy health insurance, and instituting the Raw Deal which began the socialist programs that have saddled us with an unsustainable system paid for by taxpayers. The solution is to get the power out of the hands of the politicians and keep it with the people where it belongs.
When was the last time you went to the doctor and got any pricing information beforehand? The vast majority of people just go, pay a small “co pay” and then forget about it. That is until they get a bill in the mail for some seemingly-arbitary sum of money. Put any other good or service in that context and it should immediately appear obvious how insanely we treat healthcare. It’s as though people believe healthcare isn’t subject to the same market forces that control the price of automobiles or food or computers.
If our healthcare goes down the drain we have no one to blame but ourselves. It’s our fault because we weren’t smart enough to tell the politicians to back off when they started trampling on the system back in the 30s and nobody did anything about it. Since then it’s been ever more encroaching government to “solve” problems that government created. People talk about this issue like it only just started a decade ago when it’s been building for many decades. The system we were given is not our fault, we were handed this utter mess by our predecessors but it will be our fault if we fail to fix it by slowly dismantling the entire thing and getting back to a rational system based on the unbreakable laws of economics.