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"The rich get rich and the poor get children." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Great Gatsby"

   The Senate's health care plan will offer a tax credit to help low-income families purchase Medicare insurance.
   Question: What good is a tax credit to families whose income is so low they pay little or no taxes anyway?
   Yet the plan to reduce Medicare expenses from government coffers would enable an equivalent reduction in taxes on the wealthy in America, who don't need help in purchasing health insurance on the open market.
   The bottom line, then, is that the rich would pocket the difference and the poor would lose whatever opportunity they may have had to acquire health insurance.
   As for cancelling all government aid to Planned Parenthood because of its advisory activities for those seeking abortions, this ignores the reality that Planned Parenthood has little, if any, direct role in providing abortions. Most of its activities cover women's health generally, including cancer screening and help in good parenting. Moreover, many men participate in programs offered by the agency.
   So who suffers from the massive cuts in tax-supported health programs and Medicaid insurance programs? Not the wealthy, who don't need Medicaid and who often have health insurance provided by their employers. In fact, they would gain additional money from reductions in their taxes.
   Instead, low-income families will be offered a tax cut that will be of no value to them even as they lose any opportunity they may have had to obtain health care.
   When people without adequate health care become really sick, they go to hospital emergency rooms, where by law and medical ethics they must be treated whether they have money or not. And the cost of treating them is passed on to others in the form of higher fees, which are usually paid by insurance companies.
   One would think insurance firms would see the fallacy, and endorse programs that spread the risk -- and costs -- to as wide a population as possible, so that overall, everyone benefits.
   One would think that. But one would likely be mistaken.
   Instead, without a mandate that everyone acquire health insurance so the overall costs are spread to the entire population, the young and healthy will choose not to spend what little money they have on health insurance, figuring that they're not sick and therefore don't need it.
   And if when they do, they can always go to an emergency room, where they expect they will get treatment for free.
   Yes, they will be treated. But by then it may be too late. Meanwhile, the reality remains that the cost of emergency treatment is eventually borne by the entire society.
   Better to have society as a whole participate in a health program that provides care for everyone.