Healthcare - Government Style !!!

The Obama Healthcare Express

What, you may ask, does an Amtrak train have to do with government healthcare (socialized medicine)? Well, because one can draw a direct comparison between this government program (black hole) and what we can expect from another government black hole - socialized medicine.

As reported by the Associated Press, an Eno Transportation Foundation (a think tank) report states that US taxpayers (that would be schmucks like us) subsidize each Amtrak passenger fare with $32 of our hard earned cash.  That means that for 2008 alone we shelled out $918,400,000 to help pay for the train rides of 28.7 million passengers.  Let's just round that up a touch and figure a nice round $1 billion.  Do they raise ticket prices? No.  Do they cut costs? No.  They just pour more of our bucks into this intergalactic sized black hole.

Now, some routes lose very little and others, like the New Orleans to LA train lose a whopping $462 per passenger.  Can you imagine if a private car dealership (of course, this does not include government subsidized GM or Chrysler ... they lose thousands on each car) ran an operation where it lost $462 on each customer? They'd be shutting the doors in a matter of days and lower cost competitors would rule the day.  But not the government ... if they run a business (how Constitutional is that?) and they lose gobs of dough, no problem.  They just whack the taxpayers some more or they print more paper money, further devaluing the dollars that are already in our pockets.  Then, as in the case of Amtrak, they run out and tell the world how wildly successful they were.  And if you think I'm exaggerating, the "executives" running this government department disguised as a business actively brag about ridership and revenues!  Can you imagine that?  No mention of profit, but that's not very important.  "We lose gobs of money on each rider, so our strategy is to increase ridership!"  That's the ticket!

So, look at Amtrak (or any other government run fiasco) and I submit that you'll have a perfect picture of how "healthcare" will look.  Be afraid ... be very afraid!