Physicians have been writing letters and lobbying Congress and the Senate this week to urge our representatives to put a halt to the 10.1% cut in Medicare disbursements that was scheduled to go into effect on January 1. That rate cut would be devastating to physicians practices and subsequently, to their patients. We were relieved to discover on 12-20 that our lobbying was successful, and the rate decrease has been postponed. If Medicare disbursements decrease as Medicaid's has done, you may find more and more physicians refusing to take Medicare just as many have refused to take Medicaid.

However, why do I feel like we're putting a bandaid on a festering skin cancer? My town of Zanesville, Ohio, has recently erected a brand new spacious Social Security Administration office - a very elegant bandaid on this cancer indeed. Despite the appearance, Medicare and Social Security are inevitably headed for a cliff of economic bankruptcy. The General Accounting Office of the U.S. government has warned of the coming fiscal collapse if we continue with the status quo. Some taxpayer groups are fearful of Medicare bankrupting as early as 2019. Social Security will start running a deficit in 2017, and with the use of the Social Security "Trust Fund" is due to bankrupt by 2041; however, one of the dirty little secrets in Washington is that the Social Security "Trust Fund" is full of I.O.U.'s from this and previous generations of representatives who have spent our retirement money for "pork" projects back in their districts to get themselves re-elected.

We, our parents, and our grandparents have been defrauded by generations of near-sited representatives, who appear to only care about the crisis preceding the next election. The government cannot afford to fulfill its promises, and the politicians are not making the difficult changes necessary to fulfill those promises. They're counting on not being in office when the citizenry awakens enough to want to imprison whoever's responsible for the theft.

The date predicted for the bankruptcy of Medicare doesn't even take into account the recently-passed Medicare drug entitlement program, which Presidential candidate Ron Paul has called the largest government entitlement program since Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society." Bankruptcy is probably coming sooner rather than later. I and my generation of taxpayers will pay their whole lives into a bureaucratic system that cannot fulfill its promises.

Most of us don't realize how much of our income goes to these bureaucracies. Look at your next income check stub, and see how much of your income this year has gone to Social Security. Now, imagine that money instead being spent on subsidies for wealthy business owners, Cowgirl museums, NHS studies on the sexual habits of prostitutes, condoms for kids in public schools, and bailouts of failing billion dollar corporations who'd rather exploit the taxpayer than cut costs to remain competitive. Do you actually think that you're going to get that money back when you retire? If retirement is around the corner for you, maybe, but are you willing to bankrupt your grandchildren just so that we can continue the status quo?

What must happen to keep these socialist programs alive? For Medicare, either disbursements to physicians and hospitals must be drastically cut, sooner or later, and healthcare professionals must settle with what they're given. This will, of course, result in fewer physicians who are willing to get paid less and less for the same amount of work, and Medicare patients will suffer from inadequate care. This will increase the public outcry for government takeover of the healthcare industry, which will ultimately result in even more expense, inefficiency, and waste.

Another option to remedy the socialist programs is to increase tax rates to pay for them. Can you imagine our grandchildren paying 60%, or 65%, or 75% of their income on taxes? It's hard to fathom, but no more so than it had to have been for our great-grandparents to imagine the rates that we are presently paying.

Another thing we can do to save these bureaucratic programs is to increase the age at which we qualify for Medicare and Social Security so that fewer Americans live long enough to enjoy it. We could definitely afford social security if you had to be 90 years old before you could get it!

Another likely alternative: physician-assisted suicide will be legalized to store up social security for another fifty years. How could a Supreme Court who has repeatedly justified the killing of unborn children in the womb resist the arguments for physician-assisted suicide based upon the same criteria: they're unwanted, unloved, we can't afford them, and who's to say when life begins or ends anyway? It's a "choice" between the family and their doctor, right? It may be wrong to you to kill grandma to get her inheritance early, but "who decides?" Sound familiar?

The Republicans have thrown some rhetoric to the taxpayers supporting the privatization of the duties of these bureaucracies to give the impression that they are more fiscally responsible than the Democrats, but what did they do in six years of majority leadership? The Republicans also insist they that they are pro-life, yet for all the rhetoric and the Right-to-Life endorsements, the mutilation of children continues. All their rhetoric aside, all the Republican front-runners in the Presidential race - with the single exception of Ron Paul - plan to continue the status quo if elected. The trillion-dollar fraud continues to be perpetrated upon the American people. The bureaucrats continue to rape our bank accounts and our posterity for their personal gain. Our congressional representatives are inept because we are.

Is there another option besides perpetuating the wasteful fraud we were tricked into by greedy bureaucrats? Yes! Stop perpetuating it! Why won't we learn the lesson of the failure of Communism in the U.S.S.R.? Get the government out of healthcare and welfare, and let private enterprise, capitalism, and charity meet the demand. Let taxpayers keep their own money and save it or spend it as they see fit. It they want to put their savings into a bloated government bureaucracy in hopes that their promises of Medicare and Social Security will be fulfilled, let them. But if they'd rather put their earnings in trustworthy, competitive accounts or investments, or spend the money on less expensive healthcare insurance policies that cost less and provide better benefits, they should be free to do so. Let us be free.

Some proponents of the socialist system are concerned that free Americans wouldn't take care of themselves or of each other. What if Americans don't take the money saved by disbanding the wasteful bureaucracies and invest it or save it for their retirement? What if Americans don't take care of the poor through voluntary charity? But if we want to forcibly deprive Americans of their wealth - upon pain of fine, prison, or property confiscation - to suckle the poor and care for the elderly through bureaucratic programs, shouldn't we at least take notice that the teats are drying up? While the opportunity to fail is the price of liberty, I'm convinced that most Americans will do a fine job taking care of themselves and each other, and with must better stewardship and accountability than the present socialist bureaucracy. Privatizing the duties of these bureaucracies restores our freedom over our own health and future, and is compatible with good stewardship over our resources.

We are fools if we continue to trust the government, with its grandiose, impractical promises, to care for us from the cradle to the grave. We are also cruel to our children. Imagine, if you will, how the public will respond in when the government lets on that they cannot afford to keep their promises without drastically raising taxes or drastically lowering benefits? Do you think that the public is just going to let it die and return to an economic system of caring for the elderly that we had before Social Security and Medicare, when charity and families cared for their elderly and infirmed? With our aging population, and with our learned reliance upon the government to fix whatever ails us, you know what we're going to happen. We'll vote for Communism! We'll vote for more government control over our lives. We'll vote for a government who will confiscate all of our wealth and redistribute it in order to keeps its promises to us. When a democracy leaves the principles of liberty and abandons our Constitutional limitations as ours has, 51% will, sooner or later, exploit the other 49%.

Our children will wind up enslaved for our carelessness. Communism and tyranny do not come suddenly - they come one lying politician, one covetous voter, one sin at a time. We must return to the principles of liberty, as found in the Bible and in our Constitution, or we will not long remain free.

Patrick Johnston and his wife Elizabeth reside in Zanesville, Ohio, with their six young home-schooled children. Patrick is a family practice physician and founder of the Association of Pro-life Physicians, which is dedicated to restoring a remnant of physicians in our communities who are convinced that life begins at conception and who will not commit nor refer for abortions (www.ProLifePhysicians.org).

He founded the Alliance to Reform Education Funding to fight public school levies and promote Christian home-schooling (www.StopSchoolLevies.org). Dr. Johnston is committed to revival in the church, and the restoration of Biblical law and constitutional government in America. Dr. Johnston is currently campaigning for State Representative for District 94 in Ohio. Their family ministry -

Website: www.RightRemedy.org.

E-mail: docjohnston@rightremedy.org

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