By Randy Ridgel
Last Thursday, the hospital in Lakeport became alarmed that a group of demonstrators might disrupt their ceremony that was to include Congressman Mike Thompson blessing a new medical vehicle. The hospital need not have worried; the demonstrators consisted of a handful of grandparents armed with signs like, “Please don”t throw us seniors under the bus,” standing down on Hill Road hoping to catch the congressman”s eye as he passed. They were polite, decent people.
It seems the new health care bill Thompson helped write will add 31 million new patients, including homeless, illegal aliens and poor people, while stealing $450 million from Medicare, but adding no new doctors. Mathematically, as well as really, that means a lot of old people will die without treatment, no matter what Thompson says. The frank justification given for this by Obama”s folks is that these old folks are soon going to die anyway and they consume too much care while doing it. Robert Reich: “Older people should just die ? they”re too expensive”.
Thompson”s monstrosity is going in the wrong direction to provide better health care for people. The three reasons health care is now so expensive are lawyers, lack of competition among insurers and government interference. Lawsuits eat doctors alive, insurance companies can”t compete out of the state ? which gives some a virtual monopoly ? and the government forces this lack of competition to give it an excuse to take over health care. A can of beans could cost more than an appendectomy if it was loaded with the lawsuits and government meddling that doctors must face.
I could have told those poor geriatric demonstrators they were wasting their time with Thompson; politicians react to heat not light. Thompson is the slickest politician I”ve seen since Huey Long at getting things from the government while making people overlook that they paid for them. Furthermore, lawyers dump wheelbarrows of money into his and other liberal politician”s campaigns to avoid medical lawsuit reform. In addition, enough former San Francisco hippies now vote here to re-elect him forever, he thinks.
This time, however, he may not be as untouchable as he thinks; folks are becoming alarmed at this monstrous government medical power-grab he helped engineer.
Randy Ridgel
Kelseyville
