September 26, 2009

Government Controlled Health Care would mean (cont'd from Part IV):

11) A slowing down of medical research and advances. The health care system in the United States, being primarily private, has been the fertile ground of truly astounding medical research and advances. The causes of this have been multiple: a. the cultural assumption that all human life is valuable and a good in itself; b. therefore the goal of medical research has been to lengthen life, to restore health, and to reduce the frequency and effect of handicaps; c. because of a mix of motives of profit and altruism, and because of a minimal amount of government interference, money has flowed into those areas that were thought likely to bear fruit in treatments; and d. the medical health market is so extensive in the United States that it could carry many research programs at the same time with a hope that they eventually would turn a profit, despite the initial and enormous outlay of cash.
 GCHC will change many of these conditions, all stemming from the fact that the government will control most of the health care dollars. Since a major goal is to save money, research will not be encouraged in those areas that will cause further health costs, i.e. a longer life for people means more money spent by the government in our later years. So why seek to lengthen lives? And why research treatments for birth defects if you are going to solve the problem by preventing such births?
 Under a GCHC program money will be spent on the young and the middle aged, and it will be politicized. And it will be wasted. A sterling example of this is seen in the fight over embryonic stem cell research (ESCR). Many politicians, supported by the abortion lobby, sought to pour money into ESCR. The abortion lobby supported this. The reason is that since ESCR involves the intentional destruction of human embryos, such destruction during the research process underlines the abortion lobby’s belief that human embryos are not really and truly human lives with value. Research into ESCR, costing billions of dollars to states like California and Massachusetts, with all the tiny human beings (embryos) that have been destroyed, have resulted in no cures or treatments for any medical maladies.
 Meanwhile private money has been invested for many years in adult stem cell research (ASCR), which does not involve the harming of any human life. The private money has flowed into ASCR because there were signs years ago that this would bear fruit. And it has. There are presently over one hundred effective treatments and cures for various medical problems that come from the use of adult stem cells. If the medical community had been dependant on the government for funding then many of these treatments would not exist today
 The advent of GCHC will mean the politicization of medical research, which means that research money will not necessarily go towards the avenues of most medical promise, but rather towards those that have the political backing.
 12) A massive increase in the possibility of graft and corruption.  The health care system of the United States involves 16% of the nation’s economy. Once this comes under the auspices of the federal government, the obvious possibilities for scamming the system will increase exponentially. Does anyone doubt this?

More next week

Father Mullen

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