Government Health Care is the ultimate power of life and death over the individual. Once this noose is around the people's necks, individualism, individual rights and political freedom are done in America. No doubt about it. We will then be the pawn, the serf, the slave.
All of the conversation on Government Health Care I've heard so far, phalanxed with draconian provisions in the bill which scare the "bejesus" out of people, have one intention: Take control of your life when you are most vulnerable. And this is a problem. Sometimes serious - I mean life and death - choices must be made at those times. (See Comments 4 and 5 below to see how the VA under Obama handles the end of life issue. Chilling.)
Government Health Care has no choice but to bring the "care" it dispenses into line with the taxes it collects to support it. Since everyone will have access to it, the demand will be unlimited and the resources limited. There is ZERO possibility that government can avoid this matter. And the results will, of necessity, be that it, not you, will make the critical choices. Further, it will make those choices based on policy, not individual cases.
Medicare and Medicaid are government programs - big government programs. But because there is still a free market in health care even though severely damaged and constrained by government interference since 1965, a person who makes use of Medicare or Medicaid does not have to go to a doctor that will treat Medicare or Medicaid patients. No matter how poor he is, if someone values him/her, that person can take him to a free market doctor. It is still possible for him to get the health care he needs. If he has some means, he can buy an insurance policy to cover that which Medicare does not cover.
With Government Health Care, this will no longer be possible.
Yes, President Obama is saying that he does not want to do away with the private option. He is LYING. Why do I accuse him? There is nothing in his past statements where he has not pushed for the single-payer, total Government Health Care system. As the heat gets to him, he is trying to have us think otherwise. He may no longer be holding out for this year, but he definitely intends that the government eventually - baby steps if necessary - have its single-payer system. He has said so many times.
And no matter what the terminology - single-payer, public option, coop plan - all are intended to put us on the merry path to having government as our only health care provider.
When the government is in an industry, it causes distortions in that industry which, depending on their extent, can cause it to eventually collapse whereupon people advocate government stepping in and taking it over. It causes this because it is not constrained by the laws of economics. It's law is politics.
It passes a law and throws millions of dollars at something and there is nothing that the competitive businesses can do except to reshape themselves around this "uneconomic" intrusion into the market. Instead of choosing a business or an employee or a customer by his merit, we now choose it or him because of his skin color or his economic class or whether he is a member of a union, etc. All of this deteriorates the standards and productive capacity of the market place and can cause it to get so rickety that people cry for the government to take it over. That's what happened to autos and banking. That's what has caused the mess in health care.
I have no doubt that Obama wants to change health care to be more political than economic. Isn't socialism the idea that everything is political and nothing economic? He's been consistent on this message from the beginning of his time. Consequently there is no reason to suspect that he is trying to free up health care nor make it better. Only markets care about something being better. Only they have such an incentive.
So how will the government decide who gets the care? By what means? Who will get real health care and who gets to live? It will have a policy which will distribute health care. Already policy advisers are discussing such criteria.
The English system, the one some have favored, cuts back the money it will spend on a person based on how long the actuarial tables tell them a person, given his age, is expected to live. Since end of life expenses are often, not always, the most expensive, these are the ones most rational to cut back on.
The statistical tables tell us nothing about the character or quality of the person in question. A 75-year old genius working on a book which opens a whole new possibility for mankind may be able to complete the task if given proper health care. Obama and Government Health Care would have no knowledge of this. It doesn't care. The man's friends might, but under Government Health Care, there will be no private market and they won't have the option of accessing it. They would have to leave the country.
Millions of people will not have such an option and some will die or be left to die by the government's hand. And the crime of it is that it would not have to have been this way.
"You understand how it is. I'm sorry. It's time to let 'im go. Too old. Can't pick no more cotton".
America knows what this is. THIS IS SLAVERY - in another form. You work and what you earn is siphoned off by the Government to maintain the power it has over you. Government Health Care is the "muther" of all programs. It's the one that has the power of life and death.
What is the answer?
FREEDOM.
Freedom is mankind's friend. It releases production - the principle that produces abundance.
The constrictions and distortions of the health care industry and market which came about because of The Great Society's programs in 1965, and the government regulations to which the insurance companies responded need to be dismantled.
At this point in time, it is hard to imagine that the safety net is not going to be provided by the government. Even this is a huge mistake. It will allow the situation to get still worse. It should, as all economic activity, be entirely private and free - which would make sure it stays at the level of a "safety net" and provides the competition to keep health care goods and services reasonable and at the same time foster innovation.
As a welfare program, the illusion is still maintained (which my Congressman, John Lewis advocates, by the way) that health care is a Right. If it's a Right, then you and I are his and the government's slave. This is why I say that the man who marched in Selma has now turned the tables on us and is wanting to get hold of the fire hose and the police dog.
When I hear Obama or his former doctor or anyone blasting insurance companies, I know they are up to no good. A few months ago, it was Wall Street. And then it was those car companies whose executives he replaced. With politics as it is now configured, there always has to be someone to demonize so that the government can arrogate more power unto itself. Look at history. Do not your eyes tell you this is so?
The way out of this is for the government to get out of the way - to allow free minds and free markets provide what they do so brilliantly. Separate Economy and State just as we separate Church and State, and for the same reasons. The government's proper job is to prosecute criminals - those people who are crooks - who steal, cheat, or are incompetent and irresponsible to the point they harm a person. Regulation to forestall harm is a red herring. No government can do it and it takes their eye off the ball of prosecuting the crooks.
I will make a prediction. If we end up with Government Health Care, you will not trust your doctor nor the health care system in general. Why? The tune to which it dances is not you nor your needs. All that will be said in hours upon hours of boring TV announcements about it will be beside the point. The basic and prime relationship of you to your life will have been stolen from you. No one, be it Jesus Christ himself, has this right.
Monday, August 17, 2009
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Did you ever wonder how worthwhile your vote will be when all you get to decide is who will make the life/death decision for you - rather than whether they have the right to make it?
For most of us casting a single vote among millions, when the right to live your own life is taken away, what is democracy worth?
Unless we forget how callous Obama is about these matters (I thought his tears over his grandma was cheap political theater) here are the comments he made earlier this year about Veterans who volunteer for the military: (The quote comes from www.blacksphere.net and the inner quotes are Obama's words.)
"In an effort to save what amounts to a rounding error on the nation’s budget, Obama asked veterans to sacrifice by using their spouses’ healthcare coverage. Transferring their coverage to…those mean insurance companies! When the idea was shot down, here is what Obama commented:
'Look, it’s an all volunteer force,' Obama complained. 'Nobody made these guys go to war. They had to have known and accepted the risks. Now they whine about bearing the costs of their choice? It doesn’t compute.'
'I thought these were people who were proud to sacrifice for their country,' Obama continued. 'I wasn’t asking for blood, just money. With the country facing the worst financial crisis in its history, I’d have thought that the patriotic thing to do would be to try to help reduce the nation’s deficit. I guess I underestimated the selfishness of some of my fellow Americans.'"
Here is an article with the identified tactics of those promoting Obamacare.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/the_array_of_wh_obamacare_tact.html
The Death Book for Veterans
Ex-soldiers don't need to be told they're a burden to society.
By JIM TOWEY
If President Obama wants to better understand why America's discomfort with end-of-life discussions threatens to derail his health-care reform, he might begin with his own Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). He will quickly discover how government bureaucrats are greasing the slippery slope that can start with cost containment but quickly become a systematic denial of care.
Last year, bureaucrats at the VA's National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life planning document, "Your Life, Your Choices." It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA's preferred living will throughout its vast network of hospitals and nursing homes. After the Bush White House took a look at how this document was treating complex health and moral issues, the VA suspended its use. Unfortunately, under President Obama, the VA has now resuscitated "Your Life, Your Choices."
Who is the primary author of this workbook? Dr. Robert Pearlman, chief of ethics evaluation for the center, a man who in 1996 advocated for physician-assisted suicide in Vacco v. Quill before the U.S. Supreme Court and is known for his support of health-care rationing.
"Your Life, Your Choices" presents end-of-life choices in a way aimed at steering users toward predetermined conclusions, much like a political "push poll." For example, a worksheet on page 21 lists various scenarios and asks users to then decide whether their own life would be "not worth living."
The circumstances listed include ones common among the elderly and disabled: living in a nursing home, being in a wheelchair and not being able to "shake the blues." There is a section which provocatively asks, "Have you ever heard anyone say, 'If I'm a vegetable, pull the plug'?" There also are guilt-inducing scenarios such as "I can no longer contribute to my family's well being," "I am a severe financial burden on my family" and that the vet's situation "causes severe emotional burden for my family."
When the government can steer vulnerable individuals to conclude for themselves that life is not worth living, who needs a death panel?
(Continued from the previous comment.)
One can only imagine a soldier surviving the war in Iraq and returning without all of his limbs only to encounter a veteran's health-care system that seems intent on his surrender.
I was not surprised to learn that the VA panel of experts that sought to update "Your Life, Your Choices" between 2007-2008 did not include any representatives of faith groups or disability rights advocates. And as you might guess, only one organization was listed in the new version as a resource on advance directives: the Hemlock Society (now euphemistically known as "Compassion and Choices").
This hurry-up-and-die message is clear and unconscionable. Worse, a July 2009 VA directive instructs its primary care physicians to raise advance care planning with all VA patients and to refer them to "Your Life, Your Choices." Not just those of advanced age and debilitated condition—all patients. America's 24 million veterans deserve better.
Many years ago I created an advance care planning document called "Five Wishes" that is today the most widely used living will in America, with 13 million copies in national circulation. Unlike the VA's document, this one does not contain the standard bias to withdraw or withhold medical care. It meets the legal requirements of at least 43 states, and it runs exactly 12 pages.
After a decade of observing end-of-life discussions, I can attest to the great fear that many patients have, particularly those with few family members and financial resources. I lived and worked in an AIDS home in the mid-1980s and saw first-hand how the dying wanted more than health care—they wanted someone to care.
If President Obama is sincere in stating that he is not trying to cut costs by pressuring the disabled to forgo critical care, one good way to show that commitment is to walk two blocks from the Oval Office and pull the plug on "Your Life, Your Choices." He should make sure in the future that VA decisions are guided by values that treat the lives of our veterans as gifts, not burdens.
Mr. Towey, president of Saint Vincent College, was director of the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives (2002-2006) and founder of the nonprofit Aging with Dig
(Published in the Wall Street Journal, August 18, 2009)
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