Yet with healthcare, something at least as vital as police protection, we have meekly accepted that unless you have health insurance, you don't get healthcare.
But for law enforcement? No. We, the People would never stand for the end of socialized law enforcement.
Wait a minute, what did I just write? Socialized law enforcement?! What the hell am I talking about?
I'm talking about reality, because socialized law enforcement is exactly what we have.
We all pay local, state and federal taxes. And in exchange for those taxes, we get (among other socialized services) law enforcement. Your local cops, county sheriff, state troopers, the feds - all are paid for by our taxes.
If your car breaks down out on the highway and a state trooper stops to assist and make sure you're safe, the troopers don't then present you with a bill for their services. That's because the government, using your taxes, pays for those services.
And it's not only socialized law enforcement, it's government controlled socialized law enforcement. Cops are employed by the government, and they are subject to the laws, rules, and regulations laid down by the government. We truly do have socialized, government controlled law enforcement.
So my question is this: These politicians and cable TV shouters who are constantly warning us against any kind of government sponsored single-payer health insurance plan, insisting that it would be socialized, government controlled medicine - which it is NOT - why aren't they ranting and raving and foaming at the mouth over our socialized law enforcement? Or for that matter, the socialized firefighters and fire departments? The socialized EMTs? The socialized roads and highways? The socialized parks?
The answer, of course, is that the politicians and TV shouters don't really give a damn about the philosophy of free market capitalism versus government controlled socialism. What they care about is maintaining the status quo, i.e., maintaining their flow of money, sick people be damned.
Because law enforcement (along with firefighters/fire departments, EMTs, roads and highways, parks, etc.) is socialized and government controlled and not privatized, there is no massive, multi-billion dollar industry of law enforcement insurance companies that, in league with their friends on Wall Street, buy and sell politicians who then, along with a complicit corporate-controlled media and rightwing think tanks, join together in using scare tactics, lies and disinformation about how socialized, government-sponsored-and-controlled law enforcement is such a terrible thing.
There is no cabal of law enforcement insurance companies/media blowhards/conservative think tanks/Wall Street hucksters/politicians insisting that the answer to the problem of over 45 million Americans without law enforcement insurance is the free market, and that we need to give people more law enforcement choices so they can shop around for the best law enforcement deals.
No one is spreading lies and disinformation about the efficacy and efficiency of the government controlled, socialized law enforcement system in other countries, trying to scare us away from having a similar system, regardless of how it would help victims of crime.
Yet that situation - a cabal of insurance companies, corporate controlled media, Wall Street bigwigs, and politicians spreading fear and lies about government sponsored single-payer health insurance - is exactly what we have in regards to healthcare.
They call government sponsored single-payer plans "socialized medicine" and "government controlled healthcare" (which they most certainly are not) and they insist that America has the best healthcare system in the world (which it most certainly does not).
They lie about the efficiency and efficacy of the Canadian healthcare system, which is single-payer. They lie and call it "government controlled, socialized medicine" in an attempt to frighten us into opposing a similar plan for the United States.
These health insurance corporations, with their official policies of delay, deny and deceive, are lying to you and me every - single - day.
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