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October 28, 2012

PUBLIC FORUM: Southern wrong about Obamacare

— I found the fulsome praise Gordon Southern heaped on all things Obamacare (Pharos-Tribune, Oct. 22)  ... amusing.

Having lived under a socialized medical system while stationed in Europe – and make no mistake, Obamacare’s takeover of one-sixth of our economy is a quintessential example of socialized medicine – I can assure Mr. Southern that he will eventually regret trumpeting this disastrous law if it is allowed to stand.

One of the reasons we have only one child is because she was born in a European hospital ... and it almost cost mother and daughter their lives in a medieval system that was, at least, 40 years behind us in treatment techniques, procedures, equipment and innovation.

I won’t go into the details but suffice it to say that a trip to the “krankenhaus” in Germany, Holland, France or, God forbid, England would have most of our local patients in Logansport Memorial run screaming from the building, hospital gowns flapping behind them.

If you’re a Democrat, do you want the people who were running the government in 2008 in charge of your medical system? If you’re a Republican, do you really want the people who are doing just swimmingly with the economy right now taking over health care, too? Me neither.

Ironically, Mr. Southern’s lamentation on the fact that many Americans are not covered by health insurance is in no small way attributable to the distorting effects of government regulations at both the federal and state level on that industry.  Our national system is based on an outmoded, Depression-era gimmick FDR came up with to control wages when one in four Americans was out of work.

Bottom line: I could go on and on about the unintended consequences (or to use another term, “horrors”) of the British, German, Dutch and French medical systems, or our own government’s mismanagement from everything from mortgage insurance to embassy security, but that could easily cover more room than the typical letter to the editor. Suffice it to say that what the government is trying to “fix” is about to be destroyed by that same government. They mean well but, rarely, if ever, do things work out as planned, especially by central planners.

Personally, I’d rather have the medical system run by the kinds of people who came up with the iPhone rather than those who came up with the Internal Revenue Code.

John C. Rhoades, Logansport

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