Opinion: A Trillion Here, A Trillion There
[Ed. note: The following is an excerpt from an opinion piece written by Bobby Jindal published by the Politico today.]
Things in Louisiana are looking up. We are announcing major economic development wins and private capital investment and reducing government spending in order to live within our means. We just completed a grueling legislative session where we all had to work together, Democrats and Republicans, to find a way to do more with less.
We trimmed government spending, protected vital services and refused to raise taxes. (As is the case in any legislative body, some gave it a try). I can’t say our legislative session was much fun, but it was necessary, and it is the American way. Or, at least we thought it was.
In the meantime, I’ve been catching up on the news in Washington. I wish I had not…
Click here to continue reading this article on the Politico →
Bobby Jindal makes a couple of his points:
"-The only folks who would be able to stave this off are the wealthy.- The quality of our health care would diminish.
- Someone other than patients and doctors would make decisions on the treatments and medicines we can have."
I find a lot of problems with these arguments. The first and third point are kind of linked. With the health care system in place today the wealthy ARE the only ones who get quality health care and for those who can’t afford top dollar health care someone other than the patients or doctors make decisions about the treatments and medicines one can receive. In the current system it is HMOs, pharmaceutical companies and health insurance providers who decide what treatments you get rather than the government. Unlike the government, those companies are worried about their bottom line rather than the health and well-being of the people they are supposed to be caring for. Jindal’s argument is further flawed because there are NUMEROUS examples of successful health care programs, like the one proposed by the Obama administration, that have been in place in Europe for years. Europe, a society that is just as free as ours. If there were such catastrophic results from these health care policies they would have been voted out long ago by the people of the various European countries. I also can’t help but laugh at Jindal’s fear mongering tactics by claiming that “quality of our health care” would diminish. We regularly score in the lowest percentiles of industrialized nations in terms of health care. The best part is that the countries that score higher than us are mostly the European countries that already have socialized medicine in place.
The thing the bothers me most is that apparently Mayor Kip Holden just does not get it. With the economic outlook so bleak, he still wants an $888 million tax on EBR residents to fund his vision. I pray that the voters blow this out of the water. We just cannot afford his vision until this careless spending on the Federal level is brought under control. When the tax bills start rolling in next year, a lot of people are going to be hard pressed to pay the bills and if Holden’s tax passes, more citizens will go belly up.