bustertheclown wrote:Besides, I recently read that since the Red Scare is no longer scary, the term "socialized healthcare" doesn't carry the negative weight it did in the past. . . . .
Oh, whoever wrote that was sadly mistaken.
Anyway, it's not really socialized healthcare they're worried about.
It's taking the current system of about 3, 800-pound gorillas telling 100 million ants how much the ants will be paying for their gout meds, and replacing that system with about 100 million ants picking clean the carcassas of 3 dead 800-pound gorillas, and using their patented formula for gout meds to manufacture it themselves at a fraction of the cost.
It sounds unfair, socialistic, and interventionist to the 800-pound gorillas until you consider:
1. the patent is a government-granted legal fiction, protected by government-paid prosecutors, and a government-funded court system.
2. their corporate charters are a government-granted legal fiction, which protect the 800-pound gorillas from personal liability if they make a decision that results in killing people (like cutting the quality-control budget, for example).
3. the research-scientist ants who actually came up with the innovative formula for gout meds while working for the 800-pound gorillas, pulled in a regular salary (usually somewhat less than your typical lawyer, doctor, real-estate agent, or cadillac salesman), and were educated using public funds, drove to work on public roads, and more than likely, did much of the research and safety testing in government-funded labs.
4. the 800-pound gorillas got a sweetheart deal procuring the raw feedstock for the meds after the government spent about $2 billion taxpayer dollars, and maybe a few hundred lives, invading a third-world country, and deposing their dictator, who was charging too much; and our government then justified the invasion by saying it was for "freedom", and installed a new dictator, who was more willing to make a deal.
5. the 800-pound gorilla uses cheap cockroach labor in a third world country, and avoids domestic environmental and safety regulations in manufacturing, sells the meds there for 1/10th what our ants are charged, but lobbies the government to prevent ants from importing the 1/10th-costing meds back into the country; then has the stones to complain that "socialized medicine will destroy the precious free market".
If "Red Scare" is a handy tool that distracts everyone from these real arguments, they'll keep pulling it out and flogging it for everyone's amusement.
