For Americans who support President Obama’s “health care reform” plan which includes the creation of a new public “government” insurance plan the requirement that most private companies, except for some small businesses, participate ought to be a red flag. As problematic as the corporatized health care system is (and it is, due to decades of never-ending government intervention), it could be in worse shape. However, if Obama, his hero-worshipping limousine leftists, and their collectivistic cronies have their way (and it looks as though it is heading in that direction), the deliberately-misnamed “single payer” health care for which the Democrats ache will come a cropper their way.
Obama’s plan entails the construction and implementation of a public “government” health insurance program with the promise that it will result in over $100 billion in health care savings in over 10 years mostly within Medicare, although the details have been pretty fuzzy at best. The bare bones of his plan are that everyone needs to have health insurance, and all private employers, with the exception of small business owners, must offer it. If the individual has no coverage or refuses it, he will face stiff penalties. As my good friend and fellow libertarian colleague Sheldon Richman recently and correctly pointed out, “Low-income people would be subsidized.”
If and when Obama signs the news-dominated and “hotly-debated” “reform” bill into law (and most likely it will pass with some opposition from the Republicans and little-to-no opposition from the public at large), the state will then have the unconstitutional power and authority to dictate what services and treatments will be covered, which will most likely ignite a chain reaction of lobbyists representing insurers of “indispensible” products and services who will flood the halls of Congress with endless grievances. (This transpires in the states as well.) This means that individuals will be forced to accept coverage that they otherwise wouldn’t want or need. Insurers will be coerced – at the threat of gunpoint – to provide coverage or hit their already-ailing policyholders with unnecessarily huge monthly premiums that they neither don’t need nor can afford to pay. Doesn’t that sound like socio-fascism (the fusion of socialism and fascism) to you? It does to me.
The proposal is very creepy and very insane, no matter how you slice and dice it. The plan also would not only mandate private insurers to furnish said coverage but would also slap price controls on how much they charge. That means insurance providers must bill everyone the same price regardless of their current health. That means the state will confiscate the wealth of some people and redistribute to those who didn’t earn it in the name of providing “universal” (or, as it’s now called, “single-payer”) health care. People regardless of income level who have earned that wealth will be forced to spend more on higher insurance premiums than they would be minus the federal dictate, thanks to the soon-to-be criminalized risk-based premiums. This is a clear-cut example of a very powerful health care welfare, not insurance.
Article comments
1 - Doug Hunter
Why do you get so upset about individuals having to pay for their own healthcare? We already are forced to pay for others, this seems much less egregious. In fact, I like the honesty of the government here, usually they just quietly take it in taxes from your paycheck where you'll never see or ring it up on the next generation's tab with China. This way they leave you in more control and with a realistic view of what is going on.
I like the idea, maybe they should move more in that direction. Maybe they could send out bills for the Iraq war (just make a $2,200 check out to Halliburton), or make you write your own checks to SS. I'd love to read the goverment instruction to make out a $100 check to GM so it could stay afloat long enough to be handed over to the UAW. The population would have a better feel for how much, and for what, they were being forced to pay.
In a similiar vein perhaps instead of doing all that borrowing from China maybe we should just talk Visa and Mastercard into issuing credit cards in our children's names as they are born. If we don't want to pay our Iraq war bill now, we can just put it on the kid's card and he'll have to pay it when he grows up. Talk about Head Start!
2 - Val MacEwan
Well. Look out for yourself, then, because we are not all in this together. It is the individual who reigns supreme... "hero-worshipping limousine leftists, and their collectivistic cronies" ? Name calling snappy diatribes that poke fun at the disabled and disenfranchised -- does that work for you? Solves your problems, does it? Oh where to begin to correct your logical fallacies?
Never mind. You look out for yourself, don't worry about us. We'll be fine... as long as you get what you want, that's all that matters, right?
And drive however you damn well please at whatever speed suits your fancy. And if your house catches on fire, we'll risk OUR lives to save you. Just you. Not your neighbor. Because it's all about you. Just you. Not the elderly. The developmentally disabled. The war veteran. Or the children. Just you.
3 - Dave Nalle
Val, it's not about "just you" it's about what is best for each and every individual and treating people as unique individuals who deserve a choice in how they are treated, rather than as groups or numbers on an actuarial chart. If you cannot value the individual, you are bound to decrease the quality of everyone.
Dave
4 - Zedd
Dave,
If there is no one plan for the collective then it would follow that you have no point.
Since that is in fact the case, you have no point.
As for your "distinction".... I suppose we should then let the "individual" take care of himself. Let's scrap the fire department. Old Ben Franklin was an idiot to come up with that one. He was stupid to conjure up the idea library. Lets shut all public education down. Those who can afford private education or don't value it for their children should be allow to make the choice of illiteracy as individuals. Let the individual make up his own traffic laws.
5 - zingzing
where's the fascism again?