If Socialism and Communism Are Great, Why 100 Million Victims and So Many Freedom Fighters

The mainstream media outlets inform us, reading from the daily Democrat Party briefings, that 7 in 10 Millennials are burning to vote Socialist even though they are not sure what Socialism is and 1 in 3 Millennials think Communism is great even though they’ve heard nothing about the millions of victims of communism around the world, many buried in mass graves which are still being discovered.

It is clear to those of us who escaped communism that Millennials and their assorted fellow travellers have been asleep in history classes or were reading the radical Howard Zinn’s “nuanced” social justice history book from the 1980 which is widely used in America’s schools.

Rostislav, who escaped Soviet oppression, said the following regarding the Millennials and the low information voters. “I remember a really heroic story which was secretly told to me in Arctic Siberia by Moldovan exiles. It was about Toma Arnautu group of simple peasants, who had more than enough ‘high-information’ to fight against Communists ten long years from their wild hideout deep in the mountains, until some greedy ‘compatriot’ sold them out to be tortured and shot by the Securitate henchmen. So, what I’d like to say? I’d like to say that, whatever any modern voters for theoretical Socialism may say, I don't care about their cheap reasons and justifications: I do know the horrible practices of their precious theories only too well. Hence the memory of great freedom fighters like Toma Arnautu is always helping me to be true to our mutual ideals of freedom.”

The anticommunist resistance in Romania was a popular uprising against the communist dictatorship and the Soviet occupation; it started in Bucovina in 1944 when the Soviet Red Army invaded North Bucovina and lasted through the very repressive Ceausescu years of the 1980s.

The first act of resistance against the Bolsheviks was organized by the Romanian monarchy itself which established a special battalion in Bucovina to fight against the Soviet invasion. Armed partisans organized as well shortly thereafter. After the partisan support ended in 1946 the partisans took to the mountains and organized a resistance there where it was harder to track and capture them. But the traitors among them enabled the communists to take control in the 1950s of most of those who mounted an armed opposition to communism and executed the leaders and the followers.

When the Russians “liberated” Romania, they robbed and disorganized the country. I remember grandpa telling me that the Russian liberators of their village stole everything that was not nailed down. He had a precious mantel clock stolen; the Russian soldier hung it with a chain around his neck as he was departing.

The two hundred or more Russian communist community organizers, who spoke broken Romanian, appeared overnight and fanned out around the country to spread anarchy and to install people to power who were foreign and did not care about the laws of the country, they only cared about the spread of their ideology – communism. https://despredemnitate.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/cicerone-ionitoiu-rezistenta-anticomunista.pdf

Records released after 1989 show that the resisting armed partisans called themselves “haiduci,” causing disruptions to the Communist Party dictatorship. Dispersed but ever-present around the Carpathian Mountains, they caused constant headaches for the communists who presented said “haiduci” as ordinary isolated thieves in the employ of the evil capitalists.

Any “structural opposition of the cultural and intellectual elites” was eliminated with the help of the Security forces and the Soviet agents working in Romania. The state, with centralized power in the hands of uneducated and ignorant Communist Party apparatchiks, was in shambles due to the inability of the communists to plan for a successful economic outcome. The extraordinary numbers of informers among the population propped up the pillaging communists who remained in power through coercion, fear, and population starvation.

The intensive surveillance, repression, and oppression started with Teohari Georgescu, “the head of the Ministry of the Interior between 1948 and 1952. That period was a stage of adjustment of the Securitate’s leaders to the staff policy of the newly created institution.” Georgescu’s Securitate goons became the weaponized arm of the Communist Party. He used the Securitate police forces to maintain the power and control of the Communist Party and of the oppressive state. http://www.cnsas.ro/documente/caiete/Caiete_CNSAS_nr_7-8_2011.pdf

There is a long list of doctors, engineers, teachers, priests, lawyers, painters, farmers, even socialists themselves who were deemed not socialist enough, and other professionals who were executed by communists because they dissented and refused to be oppressed by the Russian Bolsheviks and their new communist recruits in Romania. http://www.procesulcomunismului.com/marturii/fonduri/ioanitoiu/morminte2/docs/morminte2p_7.htm

Cicerone Ionitoiu wrote, “For 12 years (1946-1958) anti-communism fighters, supported by the population from the villages nearby, resisted heroically to attacks by Securitate troops. Thousands of people were involved in this fight. The population of villages at the bottom of the mountains who provided them [patriots] with food and clothing, if not executed themselves right away, filled the jails and concentration camps.” Cicerone memorialized events, names, and villages.https://despredemnitate.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/cicerone-ionitoiu-rezistenta-anticomunista.pdf

The resistors fought hard against the Soviet-aided communist theft and confiscation of property, arrests and crimes committed by Bolsheviks and their newly indoctrinated recruits. These communist crimes lasted for forty years. The Romanian people never collaborated with the dictatorship, but traitors existed who sold their families for extra food and other privileges. https://despredemnitate.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/cicerone-ionitoiu-rezistenta-anticomunista.pdf

By the time communism “fell” in 1989, few dissidents were still alive, and the former communists regrouped into a liberal class of entrepreneurs who stole funds from the former communist regime, a class of prosperous men and women with no scruples and a conscience. http://www.cnsas.ro/documente/caiete/Caiete_CNSAS_nr_7-8_2011.pdf

Executed in front of their families, thrown from church towers, or shot en masse in front of the entire village or neighborhoods in order to make an example of them and stifle any possible future resistance, these victims deserve to be remembered in a memorial dedicated to their sacrifice in the fight against communism. The victims of the communist regimes around the world over decades have grown to 100 million.  When will they have their museum and a Nuremberg-style trial to reveal the horrors of communism?

Unfortunately Millennials in America will never understand what socialism and communism are because their history textbooks gloss over that part of history and glorify murderous individuals like Che Guevara, Castro, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Ceausescu, and other communist dictators who were responsible for the death of millions of dissenters to communism.

In a positive step, President Klaus Iohannis of Romania inaugurated in May 2016 a monument dedicated to the communist resistance and had it placed in front of the Free Press House, the very place formerly adorned in 1960-1990 by a huge statue of Lenin. https://cersipamantromanesc.wordpress.com/tag/securitatea-si-miscarea-anticomunista/

Society Never Condemned the Crimes of Communism in a Public Forum

Photo: Holodomor.png

I never forget that millions of victims of communism, including my Dad, died fighting tyranny born by a utopian philosophy. They all clashed with the communist party’s Marxist ideology when they opposed the confiscation of their homes, land, guns, and personal property. They objected to the lack of food, heat, water, proper medical care, medications, human rights, personal freedom, and a decent treatment as human beings.

When Margaret Thatcher once said, “The problem with socialism is that, at some point, you run out of other people’s money,” she was referring to the deliberate attempt by a centralized socialist government to confiscate by various means wealth they viewed as unfairly earned at the expense of the oppressed masses.

Marx said, himself the original hippie who never worked and was supported by rich patrons such as Friedrich Engels (he would have made a perfect Socialist Democrat politician in office today), the proletariat does all the work, it is only fitting that the rich share their “ill-gotten wealth.”

You’ve heard the phrase, “the rich must pay their fair share” repeated at nauseam by socialists like Bernie Sanders who has now become a millionaire in the capitalist society he despises while preaching to his followers a return to a simple life in order to save the planet from Armageddon.

What wealth did we equally “share” under socialism/communism?  The wealth confiscated and stolen by force by communist party apparatchiks after throwing in jail dissenting citizens for being “bourgeois.”

Speaking of the equality the social justice warriors demand through their pink loudspeakers while blocking busy intersections for those citizens who actually work for a living - we had equal misery, equal suffering, equal mistreatment, equal poverty, constant shortages of food, rationing of necessities, water, energy, heat, and rationing of medical care.

I don’t expect the social justice “warriors” to understand what it’s like to have a full-time job in which one produces something useful since they work as angry-for-hire agitators while living in mom and dad’s basement.

Classical socialists believed that socialism was an imperfect stage before communism – the means of production were owned by the state and workers were paid hourly for their work. As the communist motto said, “They pretended to pay us, and we pretended to work.”

I agree with Winston Churchill’s famous assessment, “Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”

The failed experiment with socialism/communism at Jamestown, Virginia (1620), taught us that when people worked the land together, some were lazy and did much less work, while others, who worked harder, resented the slackers. The whole commune nearly starved to death before they returned to prior individual division of land after which the settlement thrived again.

Communism was supposed to abolish classes and the workers would have been paid for their needs not for the work they performed – “from each according to his ability, to each according to their need.” But who decided the need and the level of pay? Who received the higher pay? The answer is simple, the communist party elites and their loyal lackeys.

Sadly, today in America, we have built a permanent underclass that relies on welfare, being paid not to work, according to their needs determined by government bureaucratic charts developed to give dependence to the populace and enough to survive on. Thirty-five states pay more welfare per hour than a person earns working thus destroying the incentive to work. These are the low information voters, including illegal aliens, who are voting for communist living.

The supposed “classless” communist society did have two classes, the proletariat who called each other “comrades in chains” and the ruling elites. The controlling elites shared and used all the wealth as they pleased, according to their greedy wants.

Marxism has not worked and will never work because greed and jealousy are part of the human psyche. Not everyone is so altruistic that they are willing to work extremely hard for the good of everyone, knowing that those in power get their lion’s share of the divided pie.

Capitalism works because of self-interest. One individual’s hard work to achieve self-interest enables Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” to float everyone else’s boat. Marx himself said, “Capitalism is the most powerful mode of production available.” Waiting on the dole and the spreading of wealth is the death of initiative, self-respect, dignity, honor in a good day’s work, the pursuit of happiness, and the desire to improve one’s standing in society.

Self-interest also breeds charity. Communist elites were never charitable except to themselves. People living under communism were not charitable to strangers. They performed volunteer activities involuntarily under the forced direction of communist rulers. Everyone was spied on and watched by community organizers and snitches.

The proletariat hoarded food, enabled black markets, and engaged in bartering stolen goods or raw materials from work in order to survive. They even stole public items that were not fastened or nailed down if they could be sold for recycling.

Private property was forbidden because it created “unfair” competition. Anyone caught by the Economic Police with extra goods and belongings was sentenced to jail. But the ruling elite and their lackeys could own as much private property as they wished or as they could steal from the hapless proletariat and from the common means of production.

In the communist “utopia” I experienced, the proletariat was given free healthcare and free education heavily infused with communist indoctrination. The children of elites were chosen first for college education.

Health care was so dismal and pathetic, human life had no value. People were killed by malpractice in simple procedures; no accountability existed since everyone earned meager wages and worked for the omnipotent government that could not be sued. Doctors, nurses, teachers, and engineers were told where to live, where to practice their trade, and how much they could earn. People were forced to do everything in a communist society against their will.

Modern “socialists” in Europe run bankrupt welfare states with a nanny mentality of cradle to grave entitlements but with a substantial and large tax base collected from citizens and from large corporations to pay for it all. There is no such thing as a free meal, someone must pay for it, and it comes with strings attached.

Exceptionalism is punished, “global citizens” are shaped by socialist schools, and “group think” is rewarded. But most inventions of the modern world were the result of individual creativity and exceptional talent of one individual not of groups “brainstorming.”

Communist China did not start to make economic progress until the centralized communist bureaucracy lessened its iron grip on the population and allowed individual creativity and entrepreneurship to thrive. But now they control and “reward” citizens with social scoring for their good communist behavior. If they fail to measure up, they are denied traveling by plane, for example.

The U.S. has experienced the “Creeping Socialism” that Ronald Reagan and Friedrich von Hayek warned us about: government takeover of Chrysler, GM, student loan programs, banking and financial institutions, Obamacare, control of Internet, FCC radio programming content, attacks on Christianity, censorship on social media like Facebook, YouTube, Tweeter, and attacks on conservative speech and values.

Socialists hide behind political speech, clever euphemisms, rhetoric, deception, manipulation, lies, propaganda, class and racial division. Accusations of hate speech, bigotry, racism, homophobia, islamophobia are intended to stifle free speech.

Communist terms I left behind decades ago are now part of everyday politics: social justice, economic justice, social engineering, community organizing, nationalization, social democracy, redistributive change, equitable society, open society, social change, working class, communitarian, redistributive change.

Communism never died; it has rebranded itself across the world. It is making a comeback in the U.S. thanks to the Democrat Party, Communist Party U.S.A., Socialist Party of America, teachers, college professors, unions, ignorant Americans on welfare, Occupy Wall Street movement, ANTIFA, Black Lives Matter, main stream media, and United Nations Agenda 21/2030, the design of global communism.

Norman Matoon Thomas (1884–1968), a leading American socialist and six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America, explained best the status of socialism in the U.S.

“The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day American will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.” He continued, “I no longer need to run as a presidential candidate for the Socialist Party. The Democrat Party has adopted our platform.” It appears that they have reached that goal. Numerous members of Congress have openly declared their affiliation with the Socialist Party and the Communist Party USA.

We are governed by progressives disguised as public servants, our minds are molded by academia, priests and preachers, and main stream media socialists, our tastes are formed by communism-loving Hollywood, our ideas suggested by communists, and by men we have never heard of like George Bernard Shaw, a Fabian socialist and eugenicist, and by John Dewey, the most influential American Marxist and progressive  theorist of education and founder of our current public school teaching practice and ideology.

America is under siege, in a state of propaganda encouraging brainwashing of the population to support a socialist state. We are following in the failed multiculturalist footsteps of Europe, overrun by illegal aliens who demand amnesty, with no intention of assimilating. America is in no social and economic position to absorb so many millions without its self-destruction as a nation. We are being colonized from within by the socialist/communist tyranny of the oppressed.

We will lose private property, all accumulated wealth, the right to inheritance, the right to bear arms, and we will get in return centralized everything (transportation, communication, credit, means of production, technology), free education, equitable distribution of population density across permitted areas, and equal wages.

If we wonder why the sudden desire of young people to become socialists, look no further than your child’s teachers and history textbooks that glorify socialism/communism to impressionable students.

The Marxists, Bolsheviks, Leninists, Stalinists, Maoists, Castroists, Che Guevara worshippers, Pol Pot supporters, and other fellow travelers who have murdered 100 million people collectively in the name of communism since 1917, were never tried in a public setting like the Nuremberg trial for the Nazis which condemned National Socialism and its leaders. Communism was never really condemned in such a public forum. For this reason, young people believe that it was a benign part of world history that must be repeated by the right people who are smarter than the communist predecessors.
https://www.victimsofcommunism.org/witnessblog/2018/3/23/why-was-there-no-nuremburg-for-communism

Progressivism is Neo-Communism

New World Order T-shirt

The obsessed and irrational infatuation of intolerant Millennials with neo-communism they euphemistically call progressivism can be understood when one takes into account academia’s professorial and administrative cadre of communist indoctrinators and the world-wide curricula similar to Common Core, developed with advice, textbooks, and funds from elitist billionaires who want to re-engineer societies around the globe in the borderless and diabolically mish-mashed coexist image of their totalitarian dreams of control.

The common denominator of this infatuation is unrestrained globalism and aggressive green growth environmentalism pushed by governments at all levels and by the United Nations and its many affiliated organizations who force a “nudged” compliance with taxpayer grants.

People must like the globalist direction because they keep electing scruples-less people who will do anything for power, control, and money and will push the globalist agenda through stealthy “consensus.” And the political swamp gets deeper and deeper, swallowing the few honest individuals inclined to fight the corrupt behemoth.

This neo-communism is not unlike the totalitarian communism that allegedly died in Eastern Europe in 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Communism re-emerged in the European Union under the commercial and trade guise of one market, one currency, no passports, and no borders.

After careful planning, the communism that went underground re-emerged with a new image as a softer and gentler form of government tyranny. There is no plan to starve and gulag 100 million people like they did previously in the old communist system. They just want to reduce the planet’s population by a few billion because overpopulation, they say, is destroying the planet.

Progressivism is still a form of oppression by government control, confiscation of guns, punishment for “hate speech and hate crimes” as decided by the powers that be, diluted education which shapes a compliant global citizenry with no recognition or much knowledge of who they are and their real history, no distinct nationality, and no divergent opinions from those expressed by the government in power and its mouthpiece, the zealous press core.  

People who understand what is at stake seem to be either helpless to stop this sinking into neo-communist/progressivism abyss, are too old and tired, or are oblivious to the inherent existential danger to our civilized society.

I am not going to say “civil society” because that is the excuse the globalists give when they convene to plot our transformational demise into the global society they desire.  Usually they meet at very expensive conferences in tropical far-away locations that require trips by expensive jets spewing the very carbon they publicly tell us to reduce in our own lives and force us into paying taxes if we don’t comply.

The Romans used pane et circenses (bread and circuses) to keep an obedient citizenry happy. And the Roman soldier only cared about the pebble in his shoe, not the fate of the far-away stretching empire.

Karl Marx wrote,”Die Religion ... ist das Opium des Volkes,” in his unpublished work A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy, the introduction of which was published in Marx's journal Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher. It is generally translated as “religion is the opiate of the masses.”

Christian religion is becoming less important in America, replaced slowly by a growing Islam and by atheism; as long as there are sports on television, people are preoccupied and oblivious to the globalist machinations and plans for mankind.

It is interesting to remember the old communist Constantin Pîrvulescu, one of the founders of the Communist Party in Romania, who stood up to the dictator Ceausescu in 1979 at the 12^th Congress of PCR and opposed his re-election, accusing the entire congress that they were neglecting the real problems of the nation (which they were), and that congress (like many others), had convened for no other reason than to glorify the dear-leader.  Constantin was thrown out and arrested in his home. He was not a nice man but unafraid to speak his mind.   

Today most people do not oppose neo-communism/progressivism for fear of losing their jobs, their businesses, lucrative contracts, boycotts, membership in the right clubs, not being invited to influential parties, and other potential losses. On the contrary, they welcome progressivism in their churches, schools, clubs, universities, and at the dinner table. In a sense, they are like the Roman soldiers; they only care about the daily pebble in their existential and comfortable shoes.

Nobody is starving in America and most Americans are well taken-care of not by “bread and circuses” but by a generous welfare system from cradle to grave. And if they want to show condemnation of the progressivism invasion flooding everything in their lives like kudzu, they buy a yellow license plate with the Gadsden snake and the now meaningless words, “Don’t tread on me.” The neo-communist treads have left deep marks on the collective body, from head to toe.

Progressivism is best explained by an old sage who said long time ago, “Progress governs our world according to fatal laws. Once it starts, nobody and nothing can stop it.”

Socialized Medicine Victims

When the government promises too much free medical care to too many people without making a significant investment in the medical infrastructure, its staff, and its professional delivery, innocent victims of a shortchanged, diluted, and inefficient service are likely to emerge. And the victims will suffer in silence physically or financially, paying for much reduced or unaffordable healthcare.

Add to the poorly planned mix an enormously expensive electronic system that does not work very well and a huge influx of illegal aliens who receive free medical care the moment they unlawfully set foot on our soil, and this overburdened and unnecessarily expensive system became the Affordable Care Act passed by unilateral Democrat support and signed into law by President Obama on March 23, 2010. Colloquially known as Obamacare, despite protests from a majority of Americans, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was upheld by the Supreme Court as a tax.

Prior to ACA’s passing, the National Center for Public Policy Research warned the public in 2009 of the “Shattered Lives, 100 Vic+ims of Government Health Care,” but few paid attention in their excitement at the promise of free and better access, “you can keep your doctor, if you like your doctor,” “premiums will go down $2,500 a year per family,” and pre-existing conditions will no longer matter.

Instead of overhauling the arcane insurance system that left those with pre-existing conditions to fend for themselves, and prohibited selling insurance across state lines, the Democrats have created socialized medicine with an eventual one-payer system, putting government and the IRS in charge of our health.

We were assured by our President that, “I’ll be honest; there are countries where a single-payer system works pretty well.”  I agree it does if you have the sniffles. Case after case from Great Britain, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Japan, Russia, Sweden, and New Zealand told the stories of patients who suffered and died at the hands of socialized medicine. 

Each case is a chilling reminder that when too few goods are sold to too many people in a socialist system in which medical care is not considered a service but a right, disaster surely follows. As Margaret Thatcher so poignantly reminded us, “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” The Department of Health in Great Britain considered its system a success in 2005 because hospital waiting lists were below 800,000.

Socialized medicine and one-payer system is great if you don’t mind:

-          Being left blind because you have to wait three years for a twenty-minute surgery

-          Pulling your own teeth because you are in so much pain and there is no dentist available due to severe shortage of dentists; there is a good explanation why Brits have such bad teeth

-          Waiting 18 months to get a hearing aid

-          Being denied a cancer drug because it’s too expensive and you are too old

-          Delivering your baby in a hospital bathroom with your mom helping you

-          Your baby being born in the hospital parking lot because there is a severe shortage of nurses

-          There are no beds in the hospital so whatever emergency you have, burns, delivery, stroke, heart attack, broken limbs, you must wait

-          “12-minute ambulance ride takes nearly three hours – every time”

-          Having your cancer undetected after 50 hospital visits

-          Hospital telling you that you must “come back when you are blind”

-          Being penalized for paying for your own treatment or drugs

-          Being turned away while in labor

-          Flying 5,000 miles to escape National Health System’s wait

-          Suffer mixed-sex ward misery while terminally ill

-          Being threatened that your health care will be taken away if you pay for supplemental care yourself

-          Drowning in hospital bathtub while in labor and left unattended

-          Spending all night on a hospital gurney and ignored

-          Being left on a cold hospital floor in your old age

-          Having transportation refused to and from hospital because you are in a wheelchair

Canadians have been a bit luckier with their healthcare. It has been easy to hop across the border to the U.S. and get their medical needs tended to right away. Free care is a novel and attractive idea if you are an entitled socialist. You have insurance but you can’t get care for serious illness or drugs because they are rationed and in short supply.

The wait lists for MRIs and other expensive procedures can take years. And then there is the dark lottery that Canadian doctors hold; if you “win” the lottery, you lose your doctors. If you protest the lottery, you get bumped from surgery. “You can’t eat, you can’t talk, you can’t move your jaw at all but you must wait three months for treatment.” Some immigrants from Canada fly back to their home countries for life-saving surgeries.

In Australia, an elderly patient waits four years for cataract surgery.  Tonsil removal wait is two years. Ankle surgery wait takes three years. A woman in labor is placed in a closet until a bed becomes available. There is no bed to deliver a stillborn baby. A crushed hand takes 8 hours to treat as dictated by government guidelines.

In Japan a critically injured elderly man is turned away by 14 hospitals. A pregnant woman dies after 18 hospitals reject her.

In Sweden, if you delivered a baby without complications, you are out of the door immediately. Former Prime Minister Goran Persson had a wait from September 2003-June 2004 to have a hip replacement surgery in the hard-to-access Swedish healthcare system. Fortunately, he could have paid approximately $11,500 to have it done privately but he refused.

If you seek a colonoscopy in New Zealand, the wait is two years. Expensive cancer treatments are denied, depending on age, and many die before treatment is approved. A woman with a half-completed surgery became infertile and remained in pain for 18 months. A little boy who crushed his finger in a camping accident was sent home bandaged; his finger tip was only held in place by a flap of skin. Fortunately, his mother drove him three hours to Christchurch Hospital where he underwent surgery and his finger tip was reattached successfully. (“Shattered Lives, 100 Vic+ims of Government Health Care”)

I notice on a regular basis, in a nursing home in an affluent part of the U.S., the neglect for the elderly who are screaming and moaning in pain. They are undertreated due to cost and fear that patients in severe pain will become hooked on drugs. Celebrex, an expensive arthritis drug, for example, is replaced with a cheaper variety that is less effective and the patients’ pain management is supplemented with over the counter Tylenol.

Elderly in nursing homes are lucky if they see their doctors at all or even a nurse practitioner. Most treatment and care are administered by employees from third world countries who speak English which is hard to understand. They are very kind, do a very hard job, and try their best, but their best is not always good enough.

Pre Obamacare, Ralph B. paid Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance premium of $270 quarterly for an underemployed adult child. After Obamacare, the premium is now $300 per month, with $8,500 in network deductible and $13,500 out of network deductible.

Dvaughn’s BCBS premium increased from a $450 a month family premium with $1,000 deductible to $1050 a month with a $3,000 deductible. The new policy does cover more services but the family does not need them or use them.

Retail workers in a major chain store had good private insurance even for half-time employees. Many women worked for lower salaries because they liked the security of a good health insurance program with low deductibles and low premiums. With the advent of Obamacare which mandates outrageous coverage, the same employer had to drop all employees into the health care exchange starting January 2016. Many employees are now looking for jobs elsewhere because they cannot afford the high premiums and the high deductibles of the bronze, silver, and gold plans. And those who are receiving subsidies in the Obamacare exchange are just now finding out that they must pay taxes on the subsidy because it is considered income.

A psychiatrist, Bob E., who practices in Vermont and does not participate in any insurance networks, sees patients who pay him at the time of service. Some can get insurance reimbursement for him as an out of network doctor. Even though psychiatrists are in short supply in Vermont, he does not have a wait list. He experiences more patients who say, “No thank you,” when they learn that he is not in network. They have the money but refuse to spend more on medical care after they “have paid insurance premiums and taxes that are too high.” Dr. Bob E. said, “It seems like another failed public policy to create an artificial financial barrier to a psychiatrist who is available when patients spend months waiting for an appointment otherwise.”

Doctors are having a hard time finding referrals to specialists for their patients because Obamacare pays them less than cost. Specialists do take a few Obamacare referrals; if they don’t, they don’t get paid anything for patients they do see in the hospital. A physician tried to get a second opinion for an infectious disease specialist for his patient and nobody agreed to take him within a 25-mile radius. In his opinion, “ACA is not sustainable; it is a complete sham from start to finish.”

 

Lisa P. tells the story of how her friend has already become a victim of the beginnings of socialized medicine. In need of a refill for her pain management for fibromyalgia, she received spinal shots instead. “Three days later after the injections, she nearly died from a hemorrhagic stroke.” After cutting a piece out of her skull and a second surgery to replace it, the woman is still in a wheelchair and cannot do anything for herself. Once released by her neurosurgeon, she still cannot get regular pain medication for fibromyalgia. With additional pain from back headaches, nerve and muscles due to the stroke, her life is ruined. Thanks to hospital electronic records, her chart is incomprehensible. The new protocol, “don’t give anybody pain pills because we are trying to save the lives of drug addicts,” has certainly turned her life upside down.

Elderly people must take humiliating drug tests so that they can take a half pain pill a day to manage debilitating arthritis and back pain. Pharmacies don’t keep pain pills in stock and cannot tell you by phone if they are out or not. A family member must drive around to various pharmacies in order to get one month’s refill.  Patients already in severe pain must drive each month to a pain management doctor because they don’t write refills for pain medications. And elderly don’t drive, putting undue burden on caretakers. Chronic pain patients are treated just like drug addicts and “decent doctors like street corner drug dealers.” Lisa P. said that “People are suffering for want of cheap and safe medications that have been around for decades.”

Going to a doctor now, if you can find one that is properly trained in the U.S. and not hailing from some third world medical school, is an exercise in being ignored by both the doctor and the nurse. They used to look at the patients and talk to them. Now they are busy typing on their laptops the entire time. Strange and impertinent questions are asked along with pertinent questions that the electronic system sometimes mixes up with someone else’s chart.

Many doctors who had their own practices either retired or joined a hospital or an association of many other doctors in order to deal with Obamacare. Once doctors joined such groups, they are not able to give patients discounts for financial hardship or for cash payment. Doctors no longer have authority over their jobs. Because some prescriptions are expensive, doctors must provide prior authorization to insurance and jump through a lot of paperwork hoops before a patient gets needed medication.

Tricare will no longer reimburse patients who get their drugs directly from outside pharmacies because bases may not carry their needed meds on their formulary.  Patients must now get them through a direct mail service.

The answer to the question, whether it is a good idea to have politicians and bureaucrats decide your medical treatment and whether you live or die, is a resounding no. There is no such thing as free care, someone else must pay for it either through higher taxes, non-use of services, confiscatory premiums, writing-off costs, government subsidies, or denial of needed services (rationing of care).