Health Care for All

The thought of everybody in the USA being covered for HealthCare just for being an American...well it is a really nice thought. What a great idea...as we get old we won't have to worry about our health care. When our disabled need it they will have it. When our children need it, even in the poorest areas...they will have it. What a great country we will be when we can cover our own.

I can understand that side. It tugs at your heartstrings. It makes you think yes, why not?... But when I think about it more it makes less sense to me. Here are just a few of the reasons.

#1 - How is our country going to be able to sustain the cost of this Obama's Healthcare program?
Since Obama has taken office our deficit has quadruplied. The amount of dept our tax payers are paying is astounding. Currently we could calculate more than a %50 tax that the average American pays. This is including federal income, state income, local income taxes, property, and sales tax. This doesn't include medicare, social security, corporate, or excise taxes. Obama's Health Care plan will cost over the next 10 years an extra 634 Billion dollars. That is $634,000,000,000.00, and that is a very conservative estimate of what it will really cost. Experts are estimate 1.5 trillion as a more of a realistic number. That would be an extra $5000 per man, woman and child. This would be on top of the taxes we already pay. This cost would be picked up by the middle and upper class.

#2 - Is Obama Care going to make our health care better?


There are many other nations that have government health care. This includes Canada and many other European nations. How do these nations compare to the US Health Care. I have seen the World Health Organization's ranking of 190 nations with US as #37. So with this ranking the US with the most expensive health care in the world is ranked at #37 behind many nations that have socialized medicine. I do think socialized medicine could have an advantage in many cases. It is the cases that it can't that I would like to discuss

There is a reason that so many wealthy members of countries that offer socialized medicine come to the US for major health care needs. That reason is we have the best in the world. No place else in the world offers the level of technology and innovation that we offer. We are leading the world in new discoveries, research, and cures. If you need a transplant or cancer therapy this is were you want to be. If you have a broken leg, well that is something that anybody anywhere in the world can take care of for you.

Overall I think it will make our health care quality worse by taking away some of the competitiveness that is now active in our current free market. If doctors salaries go down, then we will not have as good of doctors. If prices are set for certain procedures, then there will be no reason for health care providers to try and improve the patient experience for those procedures. It will be who can do it the cheapest. Patient care will be effected.

#3 - What people don't want to hear the most...If you want to be healthy, then take care of yourself...

Let me start this by saying I know that there are health conditions that are not caused by poor habits. I know that, but the fact is that most are. If you want to be healthy then don't smoke, eat right, don't abuse alcohol and/or drugs, and exercise. Here is a universal health care solution for all of the americans that wont cost us more,..it will actually cost us less. It will create longer more productive and satifactory lives. The only problem with this solution is it puts the responsibility back on you as the individual for your own healthcare, not on the government. You don't have anybody to blame but, yourself.

Conclusion:

These are just a few of the things I have thought about with this whole health care debate. I would not call myself an expert on this subject. My opinion can definitely be persuaded with a well thought out arguement. If anybody has any then let me know.

Why Can't I Hear A Liberal Arguement That Makes Sense To Me

I was raised by Democrats. The first couple of times I voted, I voted straight ticket Democrat. When I was growing up and I asked my parents what the difference is between Democrats and Republicans, the answer was "Republicans are for the rich, and Democrats are for the poor."

As I grew and studied out the issues more for myself, I noticed the way I believed things should be in this great country was much more conservative than I had been voting. I see corruption on both sides of the isle and I don't think I could associate myself with either side.

See Below a quote by Judge Andrew Napolitano. This just makes sense to me.

Judge Andrew Napolitano:

"Everything the government runs is bankrupt: Medicare is broke; Medicaid is broke; the Post Office is broke; Amtrak is broke; Social Security is a bigger Ponzi scheme and bigger fraud than anything Madoff ever dreamed of and it is broke.

The government consumes wealth; private industry produces wealth. The government and private enterprise are the opposite: If private enterprise fails to produce what consumers want or fails to return a profit to investors, it goes out of business.

The government does not understand the need to satisfy consumers or investors because it doesn't produce anything; it just keeps consuming our tax dollars which we, like sheep, just keep turning over to bureaucrats to spend.

When the government wants to save money, it shuts down, like Chicago City Hall did on Monday. When private enterprise wants to make more money, it works overtime.

When the voters conclude that the public treasury has become a public trough, they will send to D.C. only those who will get as many freebees for them as they can and our constitutionally guaranteed values of private property and free enterprise will be gone forever.

If you want more of something, make it profitable, un-tax it and it will grow and flourish. If you want less of something, let the government regulate it, cap its costs and it will require taxpayer subsidies to stay alive."

What a Wonderful Week

So here we are with 4 babies now. We had Iris Ann Richardson born on Monday, August 3rd. We are so blessed to have 4 beautiful healthy children. I can't get enough of them. See the most recent pics:
















Noah was being really funny in this picture he has us all laughing















Sweet big brother















My sweet precious little girl
















Noah is such a good big brother















Fun times

More fun with baby Walt pictures

It is nice to see the kids thinking this little baby is so neat.....Especially since we have our next one due so soon. I think Mira will be in heaven her new little sibling.

Jana and Kris's New Gift from God

Well, Jana and Kris had there first child last night. For those of you that don't know this is my Brother-in-Law and Sister-in-Law. The new baby was a beautiful baby boy. I got to stop in and see him for the first time this morning. It was neat to see these 2 new parents so excited and so in love.

It made me think about a statement in "The Family: A Proclamation to the World"

"Husband and wife have a solemn responsibility to love and care for each other and for their children. "Children are an heritage of the Lord" (Psalms 127:3). Parents have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for their physical and spiritual needs, to teach them to love and serve one another, to observe the commandments of God and to be law-abiding citizens wherever they live. Husbands and wives—mothers and fathers—will be held accountable before God for the discharge of these obligations."

There is no doubt in my mind that Jana and Kris will be wonderful parents and fulfill their responsibilities as parents to this wonderful gift from God. It brings me joy to see another child born to this world to goodly parents who will love their child as much as they will. I feel lucky to just share a small portion of their new found joy with them.

Connecticut on Catholic Petitions

Here is an article about a Catholic Diocese in Connecticut that bused a group of it parishioners to a rally in Hartford to protest a bill. They then urged their parishioners to contact lawmakers about the same bill and another bill about same sex marriage. Now the state of Connecticut is investigating the Diocese actions, claiming that the organization is a lobbying group........???

What?...Is this confusing to anybody else? Are we as religious individuals just supposed to sit on the sidelines and watch? The whole purpose of the Church and State Rules was to keep government out of the churches. This way they would have have the right to express themselves and their views without government repercussions. This constitutional amendment was established because the ruling government (which at the time was a religion) was persecuting those who believed differently. There is a reason why the Founding Fathers chose this as the 1st amendment. It was that important.

Here we have a Connecticut law that is a loophole for striping a religious group's first amendment right to "petition the government" on issues that it holds dear.

PAYGO

I really like the recent Obama challange to congress to have a PayGo budget. That just makes more sense. This PAYGO would basically mean that congress would need to create a budgett that could only be spent if the money was there. This would effectively balance the budget. This makes sense to me. This was also used in the 90's and it helped to balance the budget.

My confusion comes from the previous Obama money pushes. The budget deficit has exploded to 1.8 trillion. This is four times higher than the previous record deficit. Obama acknowledged: "Entitlement increases and tax cuts need to be paid for, they're not free, and borrowing to finance them is not a sustainable long-term policy." We as tax payers have bailed out the banks, auto makers, and the are paying for the $787 billion dollar stimus package. Our government is creating a budget problem that our future generations are going to be paying for. Our deficit alone costs every man, woman, and child US citizen $6,000 a piece. How can this President support PayGo when he has championed so many opposite programs. This seems more to me like a statement used for politcal purposes and not based in his own world of reality.

Church Blessings

I have been feeling very lucky to be LDS lately. I have thought about all of the joy that it brings in life. There are so many ways this church blessed my life.

One inparticular one comes to mind....I got to hear Calan say the best prayer for dinner the other night. He never has a problem saying a prayer for dinner, but this one was really special. We had family over. When it was time to pray he said..." I would like to say this one." He started praying and you could tell he wasn't just repeating things that he had heard us say, or things he had said before. He was really praying. After he said A-men we all looked at him thinking the same thing. I was very proud of him. This little 5 year brought the spirit into our home that night.

I read a quote from Gordon Hinkley once that went something like "The greatest joy a man can have in life is to see his children grow up to be rightous and responsible adults."

I can understand this. I feel humbled by the task of being the father that I should be. Hopefully when they get older they will remember me as a good dad..and not remember some of the times that I was much less than a perfect father.

A lot has happened since my last post. We had a magical Christmas. Calan and Noah are at great ages for it. New Years Day we got to go visit family in Washington. My sister lives there. Here are a few picks.

We just had to go to the beach while we were there. It was COLD!!.. This was at Puget Sound.

Those babies were sure excited to see Grandma when we got there. We are blessed to have so many people in our lives that love us so much.

Since it rained just about the entire time we were there, but that is the Seattle area. We had to find indoor things to do. So this is a place called Charlie Safari. It was a pretty cool bouncing, climbing, hiding, exploring kid place.

It sure is nice being a part of such a nice family.