Government-mandated health care will be mediocre

Government-mandated

health care will be mediocre

Dr. Rückl, why did you

choose to come to America and practice medicine instead of practicing

under a superior European system? Was it the higher salaries that doctors

command in this country or the freedom to be your own boss? Please elaborate

because you don't seem happy with our system.

Health care administration

is overly complicated and wasteful in this country, but socializing medicine

is not the answer. If you think that after the government takes over everyone

will receive the same superb health care as say Bill Gates, then you are

a fool.

What will happen after nationalization

is that we will all get the same mediocre service as the indigent gets

and it will cost twice as much. Nearly everything the government does

is mediocre, inefficient, comes with strings attached, and not up to private

sector standards.

As for your remarks about wealth

distribution, I am one of those bad upper-income people that you would

have the government pillage in the name of equality. I already pay 39.6

percent federal income tax, 6 percent state income tax, 3 percent Medicare

tax, 12.4 percent social security tax (I am self-employed), $5,000 per

year in property tax, $500 per year in vehicle taxes.

On top of this I pay sales

taxes, gas taxes, real estate transfer taxes, etc. In short, already over

half my income goes to the government in one form or another. Most of

that which is taken from me, I am sure, is used to "more justly distribute

wealth and health." What more do you socialists want, 70 percent?

If taxes continue to go up

on the most productive members in our society, we will eventually revolt.

Not with guns but with an "Atlas Shrugged"-style work stoppage,

widespread tax cheating, black marketeering, or we will simple retire

early. We are not stupid people; we know when we are being exploited.

Don't push it. You can milk a cow for years, but you only butcher it once.

You, doctor, are a socialist,

and the oath of citizenship that you took when you came here obviously

meant very little to you. The U.S. Constitution that you swore to support

makes no provision for socialized medicine or any other "standard

social benefits package."

Why can't each person in society

be responsible for his own station in life, Dr. Rückl? Should not

a person's decision on whether or not he chooses to be his brother's keeper

be voluntary?

Bill Gilmer

Fayetteville

[email protected]