Tom McGinley, Author at TheAmericanCitizen.org

Health care in America: great medical care, poor payment system

January 25, 2025October 23, 2018 by Tom McGinley

(Third in a seven-part series: Medicare for All – Quality and Accessible Care for None)

Those touting the “Medicare for All” plan are using the phrase to entice those with just a surface awareness of what Medicare actually is into blindly jumping on board the bandwagon. In fact, the phrase is extremely disingenuous (albeit politically brilliant), designed to intentionally mislead the an public. (It is not so dissimilar from the deceptively named “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.”)

The goal is to seduce a mostly uninformed citizenry into supporting a concept that sounds like they’ll (1) never again have to pay anything for medical care; (2) such care will always be readily available when they want it and (3) medical care in the United States will remain top notch.

What Sen. Bernie Sanders and his supporters say they really want is a Canadian-style, government-, state- or bureaucratically-run health care system and not a plan similar to Medicare here in the U.S.

Countries with socialized medical care and the misconception of “rights”

January 25, 2025October 16, 2018 by Tom McGinley

(Second in a seven-part series: Medicare for All – Quality and Accessible Care for None)

The core “moral” principle supporting the Medicare for All proposal is “health care is a right.” This is not so. Free health care is not a human right, no more than free food, clothing or shelter are human rights. An intrinsic right can only come from a transcendent being – God. Kings don’t have “divine rights,” they have “divinely gifted rights” – like all the rest of us do.

No human right can demand the involuntary servitude of another person – either by being forced to provide his or her medical expertise free of charge, or by having the state confiscate the private wealth of others to pay for the care of those who don’t pay. Intellectuals invoke the claim of “rights” even when they can cite no basis or reason. They just claim it, like saying everyone has the right to “affordable housing” or a “living wage.”

The two nations most prominently cited as the darling models of single-payer systems for the Medicare for All crowd are Canada and Great Britain.

Socialism’s Rebirth in America

January 25, 2025October 11, 2018 by Tom McGinley

(First in a seven-part series: Medicare for All – Quality and Accessible Care for None)

Socialism’s origins in America began 400 years ago, when the Pilgrims made a commitment to leave the Netherlands for the New World after forming a partnership with a group of merchants from London.

Britain granted this new jointly-owned company a plantation in the Virginia Colony in 1617. Of course, we know they missed their intended destination by hundreds of miles when they landed instead along the Massachusetts coast.

This contract was a socialist planner’s dream. It stated that each adult would acquire an equal share in the company; it meant that when they arrived in 1620 Plymouth Colony operated under the governing mandate that all production was owned by the collective. “Food for All” might have been the catchy, feel-good phrase used at the time.

This economic experiment produced disastrous, fatal results. During the very first winter alone, half of the new colonists perished.

Finally, in 1623, America’s first experiment with socialism was mercifully scrapped. Individual, private property rights were established for both land and production giving each settler the right to keep (eat or sell) the fruits of his labors.

Today, just when we thought it was dead (yet again), socialism is experiencing a strong political rebirth in the United States. Combine this sentiment with an increasing distrust/dislike for private insurance companies along with a collective misunderstanding of what defines a “human right” and it’s no surprise “single-payer” or “universal health care” or the attractively-named “Medicare for All” is a steamroller-like political movement.

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