LAUGHABLE: Pictures of Retired Protesters Protesting “Socialized Medicine” While Using MediCare!!

ATLANTA— The left is eating up these pictures of retirees protesting “socialized medicine” when they are all likely participating in MediCare.  But getting too giddy about mocking these people misses some really important points in this debate.

The left loves to bash “for-profit” health-care companies as immoral.  But I’m curious how many of these same people are invested in a 401k, a 403b, an IRA, or are a member of a private, union-backed or public pension fund? If so, what percentage of the assets of those plans are directly invested in health-care-related companies that make these “obscene” profits (and thereby provide healthy investment returns to these plans)?  Or, how many are indirectly invested in these companies through mutual funds or through government bonds that are funded on the tax revenues generated from these entities? 

When an industry comprises 1/6th of the United States economy, you have to recognize our economic well-being is directly tied to it. Members of the left, particularly those close to retirement, certainly would not want to see the value of their investment holdings decline precipitously upon the passage of legislation meant to cripple the health industry’s “profit-making” capacity, I’m sure.   And let there be no doubt this would have far reaching and crippling impacts on the health industry over time.

What the left fails to realize is that the benefit of “for-profit” health care companies is that they have a market-driven incentive to keep costs below the amount of revenues they take in. This leads to their ability to operate as going concerns, which means their operations are sustainable into the future. Clearly and indisputably this same thing is not true of government organizations.

MediCare, Social Security, and MediCaid all operate at considerable losses relative to the direct tax or other revenues that are meant to finance them. Thus, federal and state governments are forced to subsidize them through indirect income taxes and sales taxes- or through excessive government borrowing.  These operational losses for entitlement programs are the biggest contributors to the extreme deficits that we have been enduring and will continue to endure as long as the Obama Administration is in office, promising the moon and stars in the form of new and unfunded entitlements.

Unfortunately, the only ways this will end are for the government to begin severe rationing under these programs, for the government to tax the society so much that economic activity is brought to a standstill, or for the government to default on its sovereign debt and end all programs immediately.

It may be funny in the moment to laugh at retirees.  But it will not be funny when the bill for all this reckless entitlement spending comes home.

Who can blame retirees that were forced throughout their adult working lives to contribute to MediCare for accepting payments from it upon retirement?  They really don’t have much of a choice here.  But they have every right to protest the rationing and the fiscal recklessness that these programs cause- and that the new “ObamaCare” program will cause.

Hurray for these brave retirees- for taking to the streets and speaking their minds!