Obama’s Health Care Plan Isn’t About Health Care
The President is eager to pass the health care bill, but he seems incredibly divorced as to the substance of the bill itself. The thousand page monster is, like every major bill since January, loaded with pork and special programs to benefit Democratic-friendly interest groups like Planned Parenthood and unions. The point isn’t passing a bill that insures the uninsured, the point is to pass a new giant government program.
The difference is that the program will eventually usurp 1/6th of the American economy and suck into the public sector where it will never again be relinquished to market forces. Obama’s health care plan is, as Mark Steyn has so accurately pointed out, about changing the fundamental relationship between the citizen and government. Once the line has been crossed where people are dependent on government for health, an eternal nanny-state relationship has inevitably been established. Obama promised to re-make America, and his revisions will change America forever if they succeed. However, his changes will also be incredibly un-American.
That may seem like a strong statement, but considering that America was founded upon the principle of limited government to maximize individual liberty, it is an accurate statement. Jefferson, Washington, Adams, and Madison never could have imagined such a gargantuan intrusion into the daily lives of Americans as Obama is now proposing.
Social programs tend to socialize civilizations (shocking I know), but socializing into communities, groups, and collectives rather than as individuals. Doing the best for the common good sounds admirable, but consider that every tyranny since Nero has justified its actions for the “common good”. The Nazis justified sterilization, genocide, and war on the common good of the German people. The result was that individuals suffered. The Communists in China justified economic and cultural advancement through the Great Leap Forward which resulted in the deaths of up to 40 million individuals. The Soviets justified collectivized farming, the Gulags, purges, and state terror for the collective good. The result was that millions of individuals died in work camps, disappeared in the night, or were starved to death.
When the individual ceases being paramount in a “free” society, it is inevitable that tyranny grows to justify doing what is best for “the common good”. Freedom isn’t the easiest solution, in fact it is much harder than relying on government for everything. Freedom has costs and it requires more work. It doesn’t always guarantee a sweet easy life, but reality dictates that it is never easy.
Freedom guarantees choice, in fact, freedom is choice. Tyranny is absence of choice, it is coercion. If choice in health care is removed from the American people, it will be another coercive force in society and a major reduction in individual freedom. It might be easier, it might reduce misery to some extent, but it will make America less free and bring her a step further away from her true self.
Witness the tattle-tale program that is strikingly Orwellian in nature that the Administration has begun to ensure that the “truth” is put forward on the health care plan. The President is encouraging citizens to rat on each other for the benefit of his partisan program. The Nazis and Soviets had programs to ensure that enemies of the state were taken care of, so to speak. While there are no Gulags in America, Obama’s rat-program is a massive step away from transparency, freedom of speech, and the government’s proper role in society.
Those who oppose this health care plan should be making the point that the real issue is freedom. The real issue is choice, and the right to be free from government coercion on matters of health. The government already forces you to pay into a gigantic and disastrous pension plan, it forces to pay for programs you disagree with, it forces you to buy certain light bulbs, it forces you to use certain types of energy, it forces you to hand over your income when you’ve died even though you’ve already paid taxes on it throughout your whole life.
The argument now is whether government should step further into the lives of individuals to remove yet another choice from them: what they want to do or not do for their health. The issue is freedom and if government takes over health care choices, there will be no turning back. Only revolution will change it.
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