Health Care, Houston Safety and Texas Politics

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Remember when it was impossible to misplace the TV remote? Because you were the TV remote? Remember when music sounded like this?

Remember when social media was truly social? Hey John, how's it going today? Well, this show is all about you. This is Fifty Plus with Doug Pike. Helpful information on your finances, good health and what to do for fun.

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Doug Pike (0:53)

All right, here we go. Welcome back to yet another edition of Fifty Plus, the show that looks at the world through eyes that have seen more than most, really. Eyes that remember hurricanes and tornadoes and wars and riots. Eyes that have gone to battle to protect freedom around the world. And now sadly, eyes that are watching our country potentially take a hard turn down a dirt road.

Our generations, those of us who are Fifty Plus, watched communism fall in Germany. We've watched socialist governments promise the moon to gullible voters and then deliver nothing and take away that vote.

We're even seeing that today, right up in New York City and a few other blemishes on our nation's founding principles.

Socialism's been around for centuries and it's never succeeded in keeping its promises. And if socialists are elected in November, it still has no chance of succeeding here either. It'll suck, it won't succeed. The notion of taking from the rich and giving to the poor only works so long as rich people exist. And extreme taxes on those same people diminish their wealth until they have nothing left to give. Either that or they pack up and move to a country that supports innovation, supports growth, kind of like the United States of America.

Rich people provide jobs. They don't promise anybody anything. But if you will go to work for a wealthy person or a wealthy company, a strong company, they will compensate you so that you can take care of your family, so that you can have a little fun on the weekends. Depending on the job you have, maybe you get a second house somewhere someday. Who knows? But it's a nice exchange of goods and services. They have money to give you in exchange for doing a job that will keep their company strong. Jobs enable others to live satisfying lives and raise families and support their communities. And that's how it's supposed to work. And it does work. It works brilliantly in this country. But now we've got a bunch of whiny babies running around thinking they deserve something for nothing. And therein lies the problem and therein lies the foot in the door that socialists have gotten now. Because way too many Americans are so soft, they've never had to do without anything, never had their incredible freedoms threatened in any way, shape or form. And now as young adults or even kids in college, they're realizing that things cost money and they don't want to work for it. They just believe because they've always gotten things free, and I'll wrap that in air quotes, from their parents, they think it ought to be free from the government too. They don't want to work for what they need. So they're going to vote somebody in who says they'll provide that. And boy are they in for a surprise. Mayor Moran Zamdani got elected because he promised New Yorkers free transportation. After he was elected, fares went up, not down. He promised free groceries. First grocery store, the first little city-run grocery store has yet to open because they can't find anybody in the grocery business who's willing to take that on because whoever has got experience in groceries knows darn well that you can't discount groceries 30% below wholesale and still keep the doors open. If he ever does get one of those stores opened up, it's not going to last long. It's doomed to failure, and it's going to take down. The problem is that opening one of those stores is going to destroy also the livelihoods of people who have run these little corner bodegas where neighborhoods have gotten all their groceries and all their household supplies for decades. Those people were true immigrants who came over here to assimilate and to become Americans. They're running their own businesses and enjoying pretty successful lives, and Mom Donnie is just going to yank it right out from under them. Here's another little promise they make that's never going to come true. How about universal health care? Yeah, we're going to have that under the socialist government, right? Like Canada and Great Britain. Well, sure, yeah, but what nobody's telling the gullibles is that in those countries, if you have any serious illness or condition, you may wait a lot longer than you'd wait here. If I need to go see a cardiologist or a pulmonologist or any-ologist, a specialist, I make a phone call because I have health insurance. I pay dearly for it, but I have it. And because we're able to develop long-term relationships with our doctors, we can usually get in within a week or two, maybe, depending on the severity of the issue and the urgency. Not so under the maple leaf, not so in Great Britain. You may wait months, quite literally, to be seen by a specialist. I looked it up, just to be sure. In Great Britain, if you need to see a cardiologist right away, you won't, period. Average wait time to see a cardiologist for any reason is 11 to 12 weeks.