OPINION:
As ugly and foolish as it is, obesity isn’t the most deadly health issue in America. Neither is the insane choice to poison oneself with tobacco. Same goes for lack of exercise and an unhealthy diet. These prime symptoms of the brain-dead are all indications of just how berserk some people can be. We should all pray people will wake up and make responsible choices as soon as possible to make America stronger and healthier.
That being said, clearly the most crippling, dangerous and deadly health threat America faces today is Fedzilla’s bureaucratic, dirty, inept fingers in our health care.
Fedzilla has violated and continues to violate the most basic health care oath: First do no harm.
Since establishing Medicare in 1965, Fedzilla has set in motion the most unhealthy, destructive, burdensome and costly so-called health care program in the history of mankind. Thanks to this bungled and deadly experiment, Medicare is on its deathbed and will expire soon.
Don’t listen to the Fedzillacrats who will try to convince you that Medicare and Medicaid are healthy. They would be lying. These programs are dying. Instead of giving the patient the needed medicine, Fedzilla is injecting our health care program with much worse poison, such as Obamacare.
Medicare cannot be revived unless we either raise massive taxes on young American workers or reverse course now and privatize our health care. Those are our only choices. Do not believe otherwise.
Know this: Health care in America was much cheaper and far more efficient when Fedzilla didn’t have its unclean, infected hands in it.
We have the most expensive, bureaucratic health care nightmare in the history of the world. Medicare and its twin, Medicaid, are dying because they are on an unsustainable financial-suicide path. Even a third-grade kid flunking math can see this.
In addition to massive costs, Fedzilla’s programs have reams of regulations that require vast and expensive Fedzilla bureaucracies and agencies to manage.
How’s this for expensive: According to the Cato Institute, Medicare trustees estimate Congress would have to come up with $80 trillion and put this money in an interest-bearing account to cover future health care expenses.
Yes, that’s 80 trillion - more than the entire wealth of the world. To put it further in perspective, the annual gross national product of the United States is roughly $15 trillion.
The very survival of the nation is at stake. Our very unhealthy and expensive health care model requires emergency-room attention if the patient, America, is to survive.
First, Obamacare must be repealed or financially strangled. Any health care model or program that proposes that Fedzilla control more of our health care should be dead on arrival in Congress. Kill those proposed programs before they spread and multiply.
Second, we must create health care models and programs based on the free market. More free-market choices will drive down health care costs and make health care more affordable. More choices works in every other industry, and it will work with health care, too, if given the opportunity. Allow people to purchase health care across state lines and watch prices tumble as health care insurance companies scramble for your health insurance business.
Third, because almost half of our Medicare dollars are spent in the last months of life, we have to do something to control these costs. As much as I respect life, requiring taxpayers to continue to fund terminal patients is immoral. Should the families of such patients want to continue to keep them alive, they should find a way to pay for it.
Fourth, we need means testing. Similar to the case for Social Security reform, if a person - myself included - has amassed a certain amount of assets, he should be required to pay for his own health care.
Fifth, personal health care savings accounts funded over a lifetime would provide future retirees with a health care nest egg to draw upon. Funding one’s own health care - what a novel concept.
The bottom line is that our population is aging and aging quickly, which is requiring more taxpayer-subsidized health care that already is on the fast track to bankruptcy. In order to survive, America needs more health care choices, more freedom and more responsibility for our own health. This will drive down costs, not increase costs, which is the current suicidal, Fedzilla model.
America has a health care crisis. It is a crisis that was put in motion by Fedzilla in 1965 and is on a course to kill the very patients Medicare was supposed to help: Americans.
Health care lesson No. 1: Never surrender your freedom or personal responsibility to Fedzilla unless you have a death wish for America.
Ted Nugent is an American rock ’n’ roll, sporting and political activist icon. He is the author of “Ted, White and Blue: The Nugent Manifesto” and “God, Guns & Rock ’N’ Roll” (Regnery Publishing).
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