Saturday, July 15, 2017

HOW TO EXPLAIN HEALTHCARE INSURANCE TO A REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN OR SENATOR

If you are friends or acquaintances with a Republican Congressman or Senator who appears to be intellectually challenged and is unable to differentiate between concepts of "socialism" and "free enterprise" (sometimes misnomered as "capitalism") try showing him or her this Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins) comic strip.

After reading the Tom Tomorrow strip, they might be able to understand the difference between different systems: a 100% socialist healthcare system-- where the government employs the doctors and owns the hospitals and drug companies (i.e. our Veterans Administration hospitals); or a modified socialist system of government payments (with price controls) to pay private medical providers such as doctors and hospitals and pharmacies (i.e. Medicare or Medicaid), or a quasi government regulated private enterprise system with some aspects of socialism-- (those being the government subsidies to the poor and lower middle class to help pay premiums) to pay for private insurance and an expansion of Medicaid- i.e. Romney Care, also known as The Affordable Care Act, a/k/a "Obamacare"; or a totally private free enterprise system (Paul Ryan's, Rand Paul's and Ted Cruz's wet dream, where millions will die without access to health care) where insurance companies can pick or choose their policy holders with no government regulation whatsoever, and everybody has the "freedom" to not be able to get any insurance or to pay $10,000 a month in premiums if they can get it....

However, even if they are too diimwitted or ideologically blinded to understand those concepts-- concepts that any moderately intelligent junior high school student should be able to grasp-- well, at least they might like the pretty colors in the pictures.