Posts Tagged ‘healh care’
People and Government – A Teachable Lesson in Civics
So, because people don’t agree, Progressives opt to use the power of government to force their will on the people, even if they don’t want it. This is the reason why the health care bill is still being pushed forward, even though every opinion poll out there shows a majority of Americans simply don’t want ObamaCare.
Did you ever see this movie? The context is that a masked character wearing a Guy Fawkes mask, depicted here, launches a single assault on a dictatorial government in Britain, one created as the result of people giving silent consent to a charismatic figure who made lofty promises of peace and security, will removing from it the ideals of freedom. The story was edgy and gutsy. The characters were believable and the ending pretty poetic. I could have done without the one girl-girl kissing scene, however.
Anyway, I was trolling through the net this morning and, after looking at quotes, I saw one that reminds me of the perspective of what government should be, “People should not be afraid of their governments, Governments should be afraid of their people.” I, then, happened on this quote by Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times:
There are ideas in this film. The most pointed is V’s belief: "People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people." I am not sure V has it right; surely in the ideal state governments and their people should exist happily together. Fear in either direction must lead to violence. But V has a totalitarian state to overthrow, and only a year to do it in, and we watch as he improvises a revolution.
While I have great respect for Roger Ebert’s take on movies, having watched him back on WGN-9 Chicago (before they went cable), I find his position on this point to be part of what is wrong with how America relates to its government. Yes I know this movie has been out there for a while and what Ebert said has a great deal of time between it and now, but it’s still a perfect teaching moment.
Ebert first says, “surely in the ideal state governments and their people should exist happily together”; he has two things wrong in this statement. First, the people are not the possessive of the government; it is the other way around. People possess THEIR government. The minute we start thinking that the people are owned, controlled, or managed by their government, we create a state that is very different than the one the Founders envisioned. Today’s Progressive moment likes to think, in their sheer arrogance, that people are the ward of the government. This is an absolute distinction from this writer’s point of view. Second, it is naiveté to think that people and government exist happily together. Thomas Paine said in Common Sense, “Government at best is a necessary evil, at worst, is an intolerable one”. Either way, it is not cynicism to consider that government itself is evil. The minute we begin to think in this idyllic fantasy that people and government live in some sort of ‘kum-bay-ah’ harmony, we are turning ripe for the conquering and subjugating.
God’s original intent was for people to govern themselves and the primary unit for humanity’s management was the family, not some elected, appointed, or nobility-born external body, designed to regulate the affairs of people. The Founders understood this clearly because they believed in the utmost respect for individuals and their families. Progressives today simply push for more government because individualized self-governance means that people won’t always comply with Progressive dogma. So, because people don’t agree, Progressives opt to use the power of government to force their will on the people, even if they don’t want it.
This is the reason why the health care bill is still being pushed forward, even though every opinion poll out there shows a majority of Americans simply don’t want ObamaCare.
Ebert then goes on to make the statement, “Fear in either direction must lead to violence”. This is not necessarily true, and it’s not true generally. Fear doesn’t always produce violence, but rather, as the Bible correctly states, fear, specifically of the Lord, produces wisdom. Fear of disciplinary action keeps students in school from becoming delinquent twits. Fear of legal punishment keeps people from breaking the law (why else does a person slow down in an area where they know the police are monitoring for speeders?). Fear from constituents keeps the government from getting so out of hand that its citizens don’t begin expressing anger at the ballot box. Fear doesn’t always produce violence; I’m not saying it doesn’t, just not always.
Government exists at the pleasure of God and the people (even when God and the people disagree) and has risen and fallen when either has mandated for a change. This is the reason why the best forms of government are those that are “of the People, by the People, and for the People”. Governments that are not of/by/for the People have great reason to fear, because if the people, in unified consent, decide to remove their government, they’re toast.
Freedom forever, my friends.
Obama Ready to Give Up Public Option – Not So Fast, Folks
Today, the Associated Press reported that the White House appears to be ready to back off of the public option, in hopes of actually moving health reforms forward and actually getting some sort of win before the Dems run the train off of the cliff. Few people in this country are more excited about the idea of getting the government out of people’s lives than I and dispensing with the public option, to me, is a step in the right direction.
But it’s not quite enough yet.
I like the idea of cooperatives for health insurance because it puts the power for health coverage in the hands of members – the public. Rather than the government running an option to compete with private industry, creating a cooperative that puts the decision making to people is the way to go.
But as so very eloquently written by the Heritage Foundation, health care cooperatives need to be completely independent entities with no ties to the federal government. They need to be member controlled and self-regulated.
There is a paragraph in the article that disturbs me about the co-op idea that Kent Conrad has proposed:
With $3 billion to $4 billion in initial support from the government, the co-ops would operate under a national structure with state affiliates, but independent of the government. They would be required to maintain the type of financial reserves that private companies are required to keep in case of unexpectedly high claims.
The idea is to get the government free and clear of health care. This means turning away any subsidy – because if you take government money, it’s never free – it comes with a price tag. Creating a national structure and state affiliates still creates a quasi-government plan!
A true co-operative means the government is not involved in the co-operative. And yes, I see the words “independent of the government”, but if they are independent of the government, then they need to be truly independent without any ties or interference from the government.
But as I have maintained before, there is too much money in health care for the government to sit on the sidelines. And the Fabian Socialism works in incremental steps. So the way I see it, they put the rest of the “reforms” in place first and then start working on the public option piece.
Be careful folks. Don’t believe them and don’t trust them. There’s too much at stake to think that the liberals will back down from all this.
To a Far-Left Liberal, Almost Anyone Else Is a Rabid Conservative
Since Congress, as a norm, ignores its constituents, except during the campaign – and then candidates just tell the people what they want to hear in order to get elected, the townhall meeting becomes the last direct forum which everyday citizens can take part in their government.
Over the last few days, we have sat back and watched left wing, Democrat congressional types go home to their districts to face the music for their tomfoolery in Congress as of late. This particular incident has been a firebrand of the liberal blogosphere over the last week:
First off, Sebelius is a hack. She gets up and gripes how she is not a member of Congress, never has been, as if it is some sort of excuse for not being attentive to what the House produced as a potential bill. She even responded with the statement about how Sen. Specter could not read legislation for a bill that has not even been written yet (an obvious red herring saying that Specter should not at least be up on the House bill, just because he’s a Senator). Sebelius was, however, unaware that the House bill would require her to develop “measurements of gender”, but she didn’t even know what that meant.
And then, to listen to Specter drone on about how he has a staff that pieces out the bill and reads it is not the same as taking a few hours and reading the legislation, at least in brief.
But the larger issue here is with respect to the crowds of meeting goers that are quite upset about his bill. Since Congress, as a norm, ignores its constituents, except during the campaign – and then candidates just tell them what they want to hear in order to get elected, the townhall meeting becomes the last forum which everyday citizens can take part in their government. So the masses come out, armed with a battery of direct, no BS questions, written with a good amount of irritation. They come out in droves to let their leaders know just how much they disapprove of their actions. (the left wingers aren’t going to come out so much, since they like the idea of Marxist healthcare). Instead of coming out, though, the left wing begins to run attack ads against the people, like this one:
So, rather than the left wing try to answer the questions of the right (since all of this stimulus/government takeover garbage is supposed to be a good idea), the right wing gets demonized as the “angry mob”.
Well, we are angry! And I guess if we get together in a large group, then yes, we’re an angry mob. And you know what? The liberals can’t stand it when we get together and protest in the same way that they do. They can get together and protest a war outside the gates of a military installation, throwing out how much they hate George Bush and how much he needed to be impeached and what not and it’s okay. But when we get together, we’re the vitriolic angry mob, filled with rage and hate against The One.
So, liberals, before you get to hating yourselves, perhaps in a faint possibility of hope, try to listen to why we are angry.
- We are sick of the government. We have watched time and time again as government programs are introduced that provide a handout to people while eroding our personal liberties and freedoms.
- We are sick of our country being directed by big-game tort lawyers and union bosses rather than “We the People”.
- We don’t want to pay our hard earned dollars for abortions for women who can’t control their sexual appetites.
- We don’t want to classify two men or two women in a homosexual union the same as traditional marriage.
- We don’t want to cede control of our parental rights and education of our children to the federal government, just because the UN thinks we can’t raise our kids right.
- We don’t want rationed health care or socialistic medicine when all we need to do is just open health care to the free market and knock off the tort insanity.
- We don’t want the government spending our hard earned tax dollars helping Blue State Obama supporters as you call it ‘economic recovery’ while we see it as “pay-offs”.
- We’re sick of you touting Global Warming and Climate Change as a religious means of wresting more money from us to give to your Green Movement allies.
- We’re angry about your attempts at Social Justice, meanwhile the ethnic group having to make all the reparations and fixes are Caucasian males. (see my post on racism)
- We’re sick of progressive liberalism, pushing our country, bit by bit, towards socialism. We think Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Patrick Henry, John Jay, and Ben Franklin were far more intelligent than Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin and wish you would understand that too.
Do you get it now? You won the majority of voters that voted, but not the majority of Americans. You call the last eight a dismal failure of domestic and foreign policy as a means of blame shifting. You play partisan games and engage in class warfare, rather than adopting the rhetoric that Obama touted during the election of getting past partisan politics. And you can’t stand it when we don’t agree with you – so you cry foul and call us rabid. Well, I guess to you, anyone is a rabid conservative.
But while we are angry with you, we don’t hate you. We love you with God’s love, as well as fellow Americans. It’s too bad you can’t accord us the same thing, but then, liberalism teaches to hate in order to get.
So, we’ll continue to be angry and you continue to hate. And we’ll just see you in 2010, because I’ll tell you this…you will see change – as you see us get angrier and angrier and the Congress begin to shift back to the center-right, where it should be. By the way, without American anger, you wouldn’t be an American liberal today. Think about that.
A Shadow of Things to Come
Very soon, the discussion of healthcare will enter into the American discourse with a vengeance. Very soon, ObamAd, Inc. will begin to work on its next private sector acquisition. It’s not enough that Maxine Waters threatened the CEO of Shell Oil last year with socia…er, I mean, the Government taking control of their companies. It’s not enough that GM now stands for Government Motors, vying for a big piece of that corporate pie by waiting until GM hits bankruptcy before buying up all the common stock and running GM from Washington instead of the glass towers of Detroit. It’s not enough that ObamAd, Inc has just told Chrysler, who is now in bankruptcy after trying to caulk their ship with taxpayer dollars to no avail, that their marketing and advertising budget has just been slashed by half.
No, very soon, ObamAd, Inc. will want a new bit of business, control of your health care. Through nationalizing the American health care system and mimicking the same programs as are in Europe, ObamAd Inc. will also create the same problems that are inherant with socialized medicine, that is, waiting lists, long lines for care, and rationed and prioritized care.
Meet Millvina Dean. She is the very last survivor of the Titanic disaster in April 1912. Millvina was just two months old when she was shuttled out of her quarters in third class to the deck, put onto a lifeboat, and spared with less than a third of the passengers aboard ship.
However, because of the health care system in Britain, she will not be getting her health care and nursing home costs covered by the government. She’s too old, so she will have to front those costs all by herself. She has resorted to selling her effects from the Titanic in order to pay for her nursing home costs.
In a positive turn of events, stars of the 1996 movie Titanic, Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio, and James Cameron have graciously donated $30,000 after being challenged to match photographer Don Mullan’s donation. While this is a wonderfhl gesture, it will take care of her for just a few months. Will they plan on continuing their donations or will she resort to selling her effects again?
There are two key lessons to learn from this incident, and both relate to socialized medicine.
1) The elderly will be systmatically prioritized out of care. As insensitive as it sounds, they will be classified as too old to make a worthwhile justification for coverage. They will either become the wards of their families, forced to fund their own care as best as they can, or go without care.
2) Costs of private care will skyrocket as the government forces new regulations on doctors and insurance companies which will require additional revenue to keep up with the government’s plan.
There are far better solutions here. Personally, the ideas brought up by John C. Goodman in the March issue of Imprimis bring up some great free-market solutions that allow health care to run more like a business (consider how medical services like cosmetic surgery and vision correction, which work more free-market are very successful).
For example, what would happen if hospitals were actually required to publish their error rates (such as rates of infection, misdiagnosis, or improper perscriptions)? What would that change alone do to hospitals that would be forced to compete for business? Easy, quality of service goes up quickly; perhaps warranted care comes to fruition. Anyway, read Goodman’s article if you get a moment.
Health care in the US is about to be treated, whether it needs it or not. The current administration is all about nationalizing things, taking control of the private sector, and imposing its will on Americans.
Perhaps in a sick way, this is a good thing, since liberalism and socialism fail as a system of government, this may bring a new resurgeance of conservative government back to the center stage sooner than we think. Of course, we as conservatives need to get back to the basics of our beliefs, start living them, not backing down, and sharing them wherever we can. As much as they would like to think so, the liberals don’t own this country. And at the rate they are going, they won’t be running it for long.
