Is health care a public safety issue?

One of the arguments that liberals make about health care is that is an essential part of public safety, like fire departments and police departments. Such liberals argue that that such essential services to public safety are best served by government acting in a non profit nature. Fair enough.

But, what is striking about the liberal argument is that they seem enamored with the Obama Health Care plan that was passed by Congress. People who tell us that health care is to be non profit are quick to embrace a bill that forces Americans to buy health insurance policies from for profit insurance companies. The are quick to embrace a law that forces businesses to literally go out of business in order to make sure other businesses make healthy profits.

If such seems like a farce, it is. Democrats and liberals, the so called champions of the poor, are out campaigning to support their bill that forces the poor to pay the insurance companies. Think of it terms that some liberals put it. If the local fire department was treated like health care, here is how it would go with them. First, you would have to pay a for profit fire department to serve you. Then if you did not pay, they would fine you, or even worse, go on about how you did not pay your fair share as they let your house burn down, with whomever inside it. Then, they would campaign on how much making you, whether you had a job or not, pay for fire service actually was for your benefit.

Well, common sense says its not. It is for the insurance industry’s benefit. For all the harping the liberals and Democrats do about Republicans and big money, if you follow the dollars, big insurance money bought the so called Obama Health Care bill.

On the flip side, the conservative free market approach created the innovative drugs and services that make the American health care system the envy of the world. If some world leader gets sick, he goes to the United States for treatment. And, for those you who call yourselves liberals out there, the current system, before reform, made sure that someone who showed up in an American emergency room got treatment. It was actually Ronald Reagan who pushed for legislation to make sure no American emergency room could turn a patient in trouble away.

Further, and this is on Republican George W. Bush, before the so called Medicare reform bill that gave so called prescription drug coverage, states, such as South Carolina with its Silver Card program, had drug programs in place that were much more beneficial to the elderly and disabled. But, the big drug companies bought their bill.

Such is the perils of big federal government. If indeed health care is a public safety issue as so many liberals argue, than it is an issue for the states to handle. As folks in Nebraska or Oregon or Georgia know best how to provide for fire and police services, the states have the right to determine their own way of dealing with health care. The best thing to drive down health insurance and health care costs is for the federal government to get out of it.