How will we pay for health care?

The Monday Dispatch article on the proposed health-care overhaul said the state would lose up to $28 billion in Medicaid money under the plan. That money represents tax dollars and borrowed dollars. Asking the federal government to spend that amount in Ohio is not an easy solution to a fundamental question: What are the “rights” that the federal government is required, by the U.S. Constitution, to fulfill?

It must provide for the common defense. In terms of the people, it promotes the general welfare. It does not provide health care, child care, maternal leave, jobs, or any other wonderful thing available in our world.

The article asks for more water from a well going dry. The Medicare and Social Security programs, federal programs in law, are insolvent. They both spend money out of the general tax funds. That is, the money collected for them is insufficient to pay the recipients in these programs. The shortfall is paid out of general tax revenue and borrowed money as needed.

Today we are $20 trillion in debt. The Dispatch should run a story about how we can provide for unlimited “wants” with limited “means.”

I don’t have the answers to health care because the problem is very complicated. I’m an older person, so I go from a time when there was no health insurance for most people to current times. Health and longevity are much better today. The question is not about whether we should have universal health care, it is “How do we pay for it?”

The people who want the federal government to spend more borrowed money must face the fact that the debt crash will come and all these programs will run out of cash. Demanding more is simplistic; paying for what you get is for adults.

We must get our heads straight, do what we can in our world and try for utopia in the future.

Francis Dostie Pickerington