Having recently reached the wizened old age of 65, I found myself in need of supplemental coverage for the mandatory National Government provided Medicare insurance. I use the term mandatory because I was automatically enrolled in Medicare, Part A, which is described as “Hospitalization Coverage.” Interestingly enough, the “Medical Coverage,” or Medicare, Part B is optional, offered by the National Government for a fee of just over $100 monthly.
I was curious as to the “Medical Coverage” available to me through private insurers if I declined Medicare, Part B. After all, in a “Free Market” I should be able to compare the cost of private versus National “Medical Coverage” and make a reasoned decision to choose my personal coverage based on the cost versus benefits various plans offered.
I can’t tell you how surprised I was to find that no reasonable alternatives were offered, even after contacting numerous insurance brokers and insurance companies. It seems that all private companies expect, of course they don’t require you to have Medicare, Part B, but they expect that you will first have obtained “Part B” coverage from the National Government. Several independent insurance brokers said they would obtain a quote from their health lines for medical coverage only and call me, but as yet, none have!
Given that result, I “chose” to purchase Medicare, Part B, from the National Government.
That led to my purchase of “supplemental” insurance coverage, a rational choice considering the lapses and limitations that the National Medicare program had seemingly negotiated with Hospitals and Health Care providers. I chose Aetna, a reputable insurance company with a fine reputation, and enrolled in a PDP policy. As I have yet to need use of the policy, I can only express my hope that Aetna will provide the insurance coverages I might need, at the lowest possible out of pocket cost to me.
The reader will note that I used, in the paragraph above, the phrase “seemingly negotiated” regarding coverages provided by Hospitals and Health Care providers to insured citizens through Medicare, Parts A and B. My subsequent review of the legal relationship between the National Government and those entities providing service reveals that no real negotiations take place, rather, government bureaucrats, under direction from their respective Department Secretaries and the Executive Branch dictate the terms of service and financial remuneration by which all Hospitals and Health Care providers will be governed.
This fact is disappointing to me. Further study indicated that I might also need Medicare Part D, Prescription Drug Coverage, which I found was offered through many of the same Insurance companies who offered Medicare, Parts and B, and whose rates ranged from the high teens to several hundred dollars monthly. I selected a plan through Aetna, and just this week had opportunity to use it. Here, the tale becomes interesting. I visited the pharmacy that I had used in the past, offered the prescription to them, and, yes, asked for the monthly cost. The store, Kroger, placed the cost of a 30 day supply at $38.37. I considered the cost, and declined to have them fill the prescription. I then visited another store, Ingles, and asked the same of them, what will this prescription cost? What? $38.37? Exactly the same as Kroger’s? Isn’t that odd, after all, Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup was priced that very day at $1.00 a can at Kroger’s and $1.68 a can at Ingle’s; the two stores often compete for shoppers on price, they often exhibit characteristics common to a “Free Market.”
In fact, that day each of the five stores I visited offered to fill my prescription at the exact same cost! It would appear that they will charge me whatever the full amount of reimbursement that Aetna’s Medicare Part D coverage allows. Absolutely no competitive marketing paradigm, no free market channel pricing, no consumer competition drives the price of my prescription.
This brings me to my final point. In 2012, health care related cost will reach nearly 20% of GDP! One fifth of all commerce will thus be controlled by factors other than consumer choice. One fifth of all domestic spending will be excluded from “Free Market” economic competition. In point of fact, the health care related economic sector is regulated by government bureaucrats and powerful, government dominated health care cabals, near monopolies acting in concert with national regulators. It is a mixture of the worst possible manifestation of socialism and capitalism, a hybrid fascism that is paternalistic, mendacious, avaricious, and criminal. And, it is, in my opinion, patently unconstitutional and unconscionable, immoral and without Judeo-Christian construct or constraint.
We are all part of this problem, we are all well on our way to Babylon! Medicare, Medicaid, these programs can not be fixed. Government spending may well exceed 40% of GDP this year; this level of spending can not be sustained. We need a revolution, a change of heart, a return to the dark days of 1770, when faithful, godly men and women sought to overturn a corrupt monarch who sought to govern by edit, by coercion, and finally, by force. The American Revolution did not begin in 1776, it did not spring forth full-blown from the firmament, nor from the stirring words written by Thomas Jefferson; it arose from the Blood Spilled in Boston on the Fifth of March, 1770.
It came from the people, a tolerant people, law abiding, resourceful, peace loving, who chafed under taxes imposed by a far away parliament, enacted to raise funds for profligate spending on war and social excess. Theirs was not an absolute monarch, but one whose sway over the legislature was compelling, and whose thumb controlled the profits of the Proprietors and Companies whose lands became “Colonial States” and the revenues of the Royal Colonies in North America. The oppression that resulted in blood spilling on that day was not a result of draconian acts, torture, villainy, or the result of secret police or state sponsored terrorism, the oppression was a result of opposition to tariffs and taxes enacted to pay for a King’s War and a King’s Folly.
And isn’t this what we in America face today? Are we not the victim’s of one President’s Wars and another President’s Folly? And who has been complicit in this gluttony of xenophobic spending? None other than the Congress of the United States, acting and spending as wantonly and foolishly as King George’s Parliament, sheepishly denying our last two Presidents nothing, and failing to stand, as those Minute Men did, and call for an end to economic oppression, misanthropic taxes and unnecessary burdensome spending.
Where were you Senator Chambliss, in this past Presidential campaign? I did not hear your voice calling for support in Georgia for a Conservative candidate in the Republican Primary and I did not see you in one advertisement supporting for your Party’s Nominee for President, Mitt Romney. Was your campaign war chest too empty to share, or too rich to “waste”?
Where would you have been standing on that cold evening in Boston on King Street? Which side would you have taken in 1770, which side will you take now?
Where were you Senator Isakson, in this past Presidential campaign? I did not hear your voice calling for support in Georgia for a Conservative candidate in the Republican Primary. How did you spend your treasure supporting for your Party’s Nominee for President, Mitt Romney? We read what you say you believe in, but we don’t hear your voice. You vote as a conservative, yet you fail to offer alternatives to a bankrupt fiscal policy, and fail to campaign against the seditionists who control the Senate. Not one of you high and mighty Republican Senators campaigned in Nevada against Harry Reid, or against Murray, or Boxer or any of the Fifty plus other spendthrifts who daily plunge ourselves, our children and our grandchildren into unrecoverable debt. I did not hear you in 2012; will you find your voice in 2014?
Where would you have been standing on that cold evening in Boston on King Street? Surely you would have been on the Patriot’s side in 1770, but isn’t it time to step to the front of the milling crowd now? Let us hear your voice!
And what may we expect from the peripatetic campaigning Members of the House of Representatives? You were meant by the Framing Father’s to be our direct voice, the people’s voice, in Congress. The senator’s were meant to express the voice of the State, of State Government, but you are meant to hear the voice of each constituent, to listen to and act upon their needs. There are nine Republicans in the US House from Georgia, all claim to be conservative, but we, the People, hear no voices, see no one in the well, condemning those who are destroying the United States from within. Really, none of you have an opinion of President Obama? None of you can find fault with his nominees? All of you are satisfied with his policies? No, then let us hear it! Buy air time; take a minute to tell us what you really think. Go to your donors and tell them you need a voice, they need a voice; we all need a voice in the great liberal wilderness, Mass Media. Get social Media savvy, recruit youthful experts, form a Georgia Media PAC, start spending, start influencing public opinion. It can be done, Ford, Chrysler, Microsoft, Dell, even Kroger and Ingles do it every day!
So many conservatives claim business backgrounds, claim to be entrepreneurs, and yet fail to realize this is the Sale of your life. What would Dale Carnegie do? Zig Ziglar? Tony Robbins? Surely some of you have read their books, heard their tapes, and viewed their videos!
Where would you have been standing on that cold evening in Boston on King Street?
It that you, ready to bleed for your beliefs, or are you just a bystander, waiting for someone else to bleed for you?
Speak up, Kingston, Westmorland, Price! Call out Woodall, Scott and Collins! Let us hear you Broun, Gingrey, and Graves!
For that matter, Bishop, Johnson, Lewis, Barrow and Scott try thinking for yourself, consider your constituents in 10 or 20 years when there is no more entitlement funds to be had from the National Government, what will your legacy be? One of you stood before the mob, faced down demons, and was a disciple of the bravest Georgian I’ve ever known. That one of you would be first, standing proudly and defiantly before the Tyrant’s men. Where would we find the rest of you?
This year, let us celebrate and commemorate that date, March 5th 1770, the date the Tyrant turned on his people. Let us remember that day’s sacrifice, and pledge our blood to restore freedom, to insure justice, and to preserve our culture. We must restore the first American Revolution; we must be guided by the Founding Father’s courage, wisdom and belief. Let us live our lives as our founding patriots hoped and envisioned we would live.
On March 5th 2013, we must dedicate ourselves to winning the hearts and minds of American’s in November, 2014. There is no other choice, if we can not find compassion in the telling of truth, hope in curbing of spending and equality in the burden of taxation, the conservative cause will be lost.
In a time of turmoil and great strife, in a time of war and extreme partisanship, the first Republican President said well what is so necessary today, “…that the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom.”
