OBAMACARE VS. LENINCARE: NOT MUCH DIFFERENCE

http://news.investors.com/article/605433/201203231732/obamacare-ominously-similar-to-soviet-socialized-medicine.htm

Investors.com – IBD Editorials – 3/23/2012

The Obama Record: When V.I. Lenin sought to remake Russian society into a "proletariats' paradise," he targeted three sectors for control: health care, banking and education. Sound familiar?

In 1918, the USSR became the first nation to promise "free" universal health care.  Fifteen years later, major flaws appeared in its grand social experiment, even to Western observers who largely romanticized it.

Russia in 1933:   "there still exists a great shortage of physicians and hospitals," they wrote in their report, "Red Medicine: Socialized Health in Soviet Russia." "Drugs are almost fabulously dear and scarce."  "Overworked doctors" couldn't handle the flood of new patients. A bloated new medical bureaucracy, led by the People's Commissar of Public Health, only worsened delays in treatment.

"Most workers and their families receive free medical treatment as insured persons," the report said. "But the funds for this treatment do not come from insurance funds, but from general taxation."

ObamaCare creates some 160 new federal agencies and offices overseen by the Health and Human Services Department, which will control a handful of large insurance companies operating like public utilities.  Like Lenin, Obama plans to ration care, especially for the elderly.

. . . cost-saving recommendations, which can't be overruled, go into effect starting in 2014. Cutting costs through rationing is now more critical than ever, as ObamaCare is already over budget. In its first decade, it will cost twice as much — more than $2 trillion — as first projected, according to a new Congressional Budget Office study.

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