Final thoughts on health care bill
I can't stay up for the final vote because I have to go to work tomorrow to...pay for the health care bill. But I want to make one final comment for what this legislation means for America, as I see it. YMMV.
There used to be a country I knew that believed in freedom. And part of that freedom was the belief that if you wanted to smoke four packs of Marlboros a day and eat Big Macs and drink Jack Daniels every night, well, that's your business. It was no concern of mine. Oh, sure, you could argue that in a roundabout way I paid for police enforcement I never used or higher life insurance premiums to defray the cost of high-risk behavior, but that was part of the daily nickel-and-diming that's part of doing business. Some kids at Harvard are getting scholarships and others are paying top dollar. This is all part of the implicit nature of society.
Now Congress is saying that we have an explicit duty to pay for the health care of everyone. In particular, young and healthy Americans will be compelled to purchase insurance to subsidize the health care of mostly older Americans who are already eating up half of the entire U.S. budget with Medicare and Social Security payments. The new rules for insurance companies will distort their core activity of assessing risk and setting insurance rates based on that risk. The inevitable result will be an indirect subsidy from those who play by the rules to those who roll the dice.
What's the logical endgame to this situation? A nation of scolds. Now that everybody is paying for everybody else's health care, we're going to clamp down on the smokers, and the drinkers, and the trans-fat eaters until there's nothing left but carrot juice and aerobics.
We'll give up our "liberty" and "pursuit of happiness" for "life." Oh, and with a new entitlement, we'll go broke in the process. What a great plan.
11 comments:
Instead of the country going broke in 30-40 years (being optimistic), it will be 20.
That's what happens when we put the kids in charge of the candy store.
20? That's optimistic.
As the last living bald eagle soars sadly out of sight, forever...
Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-GA), 8/5/93:
"I believe this [the 1993 Clinton deficit reduction package] will lead to a recession next year. This is the Democrat machine's recession, and each one of them will be held personally accountable."
Rep. John Kasich (R-OH), 8/5/93:
"Do you know what? This is your package. We will come back here next year and try to help you when this puts the economy in the gutter."
Rep. Wally Herger (R-CA), 8/4/93:
"The simple fact is that the Clinton plan will not lower interest rates. It will not lower inflation. It will not create jobs. And it will no lower the deficit. The Clinton tax plan will spur inflation, lose jobs, increase the deficit, and hurt our economic growth."
Rep. Dick Armey (R-TX), 8/2/93:
"Clearly this is a job killer in the short run. The revenues forecast for this budget will not materialize; the costs of this budget will be greater than what is forecast. The deficit will be worse, and it is not a good omen for the American economy."
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Rep. Durward Hall (R-MO), 4/8/65:
"[Medicare is] an ill-conceived adventure in government medicine... the patient is certain to be the ultimate sufferer."
Rep. Tim Lee Carter (R-KY), 4/65:
"As one of the last country doctors... I ask my colleagues to vote to recommit... a bill which will within a few years cruelly overburden the Social Security System and the young workers with growing families, who will be forced to pay higher Social Security taxes."
Rep. Joel T. Broyhill (R-VA), 1965:
"If the hospitals are prevented from charging the customary rates to the patients over age 65, hospital costs for patients under age 65 will have to be increased in order to make up the difference. In order to reduce its losses, when the patients under age 65 can no longer bear such increases, the hospital will be forced to curtail the quality of its service... this would impair the quality of health care, retard the advancement of medical science, and displace private insurance."
Ronald Reagan, 1965:
"One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism has been by way of medicine. If you don't do this [write to Congress opposing Medicare], one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was like in American when men were free."
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Rep. John Taber (R-NY), 4/19/35:
"[On Social Security:] Never in the history of the world has any measure been brought here so insidiously designed as to prevent business recovery, to enslave workers and to prevent any possibility of the employers providing work for the people."
Rep. Daniel Reed (R-NY), 1935:
"The lash of the dictator will be felt and 25 million free American citizens will for the first time submit themselves to a fingerprint test."
With Obamacare being forced down our throats, now is not the time to shrivel away. Now is the time to stand up and fight back harder then ever before. Will you join us on a campaign to DESTROY THE MOUTHPIECE OF OBAMA'S SOCIALIST AGENDA, THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA? WE ARE IN A FIGHT FOR THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY, A FIGHT FOR OUR CHILDREN'S FUTURE. Join the fight here, http://sosssn.blogspot.com/
The fight for freedom begins... on some guy's blog! It's like Facebook Farm Town for paranoids! Losers unite!
Interesting cut-and-paste from the DNC, "country here."
Curious me: what was the country's debt-to-GNP way back when?
What was it way, way, way back when the GOP was putting through tax cuts the same time they were starting the neocons' wet dream of a war?
Ah, the good old days when deficits were in mere billions...
Yeah, that's what happens when a competent President hands over the football.
So basically the Republicans have been right all along, every time.
Thanks Anonymous. The only thing you left off was the Democrats budget projections for the programs. That would really drive the point home.
Thank God the new health system will be able to deal with John's dyslexia. And those open wounds he's suffered from "the lash of the dictator."
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