The Slippery Slope to Tyranny Just Got a Lot Slicker

The America you wake up in tomorrow won't be the same America as today. It won't be the America you grew up in or that your parents and grandparents knew. It won't be the America you hoped to pass down to your children. It won't be a free America or a prosperous America, and it certainly won't be a peaceful America. If the health care bill the president and Congress passed is allowed to stand as the law of the land, then this is probably the beginning of the end of the United States of America. We've gone from Madison to Marxism in less than 250 years.

Let's be clear. The health care bill isn't about anyone's health. For a cool 50 billion dollars, we could have literally handed out $10,000 checks to 5 million sick uninsured individuals to help them pay their medical bills. It's not a perfect solution, but it would have been smarter and cheaper than remaking the entire health care system in the image of Big Government. The truth is this is all about power, and the new bill puts one-sixth of the economy under total and direct federal supervision. The president's health care bill wrestles power away from the people and strips many decisions from individuals, families, employers, doctors, and private health insurance companies. If you are a health care provider, you will now be forced to comply with 2700 pages of rules, regulations, tax increases, and federal mandates. If you are an individual, the government will pick "the right coverage for you" or you will be fined.

Nowhere does the Constitution give the federal government the power to tax individuals for not buying a particular commercial product. This is, for lack of a better word, fascism. If the government can force you to buy a certain type of health insurance coverage, what's to keep them from making you buy a certain type of car like a hybrid or requiring you to put solar panels on the roof of your house? What's to stop them from getting in bed with all sorts of businesses and industries, forcing you to buy an energy-efficient, government-subsidized GE appliance for instance? When government takes this kind of control of our economy, what does that do to the private sector? It lessens choice and competition while discouraging innovation in the marketplace. That's never good for the people.

Under President Obama, the slippery slope to tyranny just got a lot slicker. If the federal government is no longer restricted by the enumerated powers listed in the Constitution, then it has carte blanche to control every aspect of our lives. In other words, it has infinite power. The Madisonian social contract we entered into as citizens to protect our freedoms has been turned into a leviathan that asks every citizen to submit to the government's ever-expanding will. That's why even if the health care bill somehow manages to lower premiums and provide affordable insurance for a few extra million people (which I highly doubt), the precedent it establishes for usurping our founding principles isn't worth it. Period.

The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen. And as the citizen gets smaller and feels the unjust burden of the government's iron fist coming down, as they see their choices limited, they will act out in panic. They will fight for the few liberties they have left. Dissidents will be deemed enemies of the state. Neighbors will stop trusting neighbors. The nation that remains will be deeply divided. This is the "permanent revolution" Marxism promises, and what is progressivism if not a sister ideology of Marxism? Who is the trusted steward on the Left who will keep these philosophies separate? When you dance with the devil, he usually leads.

If the courts allow this law to stand, we are staring at the face of totalitarianism. That some see this as benevolent totalitarianism in the short term is of little comfort. America cannot and will not stand for such a dramatic shift in the balance of power. The good news is the Supreme Court is currently in our favor and there are still a couple of elections to turn this thing around. I don't want to sound like an alarmist, but I believe that if we fail to undo this, the United States will cease to exist. Government won't have the consent of the governed, and states will most likely secede. This is a more realistic scenario than it has been in the past 150 years. It could happen in our lifetime.

No one can accuse Obama and Pelosi of being cowards. Their plan has been put into action. Was it worth it, Democrats? Does the end justify the means?

Paul Krugman's Laughable Closing Arguments for ObamaCare

If this is what passes for knowledge in left wing circles, making Joe Biden vice-president is starting to make a lot more sense. Between Barack Obama and Paul Krugman, I'm beginning to think Obama's Nobel Prize was the more deserved and less ridiculous of the two. If this guy ever approaches me at a cocktail party, please slip me some cyanide. Or get Keith Olbermann to interrupt us and steer me away for an innane converstation about watching baseball with his dad.

Let's dissect the arguments and conscience of this liberal, shall we? Paul writes:

One way or another, the fate of health care reform is going to be decided in the next few days. If House Democratic leaders find 216 votes, reform will almost immediately become the law of the land. If they don’t, reform may well be put off for many years — possibly a decade or more.

Great opening. Except it sets up a choice that is completely false, between a bad piece of legislation that is highly unpopular or no reform at all for decades. This is the dishonesty that Americans are sick of in this debate. There doesn't have to be any delay. The Republicans have ideas for health care reform. We could vote on these tomorrow if Democrats were willing to open their minds to free market principles and govern from the center. But they won't, because they are religious zealots who worship at the altar of the Big G (as in Big Government). Also, even though it would become the law of the land, the "health care" part wouldn't kick in for four more years. The tax increases, however, would be immediate.

Paul continues:

As it happens, Reuters published an investigative report this week that powerfully illustrates the vileness of our current system. The report concerns the insurer Fortis, now part of Assurant Health, which turns out to have had a systematic policy of revoking its clients’ policies when they got sick... This was illegal, and the company must have known it: the South Carolina Supreme Court, after upholding a decision granting large damages to the wronged policyholder, concluded that the company had been systematically concealing its actions when withdrawing coverage, not just in this case, but across the board.

So we have an example of one insurance company engaged in illegal and unethical behavior. Damaging, isn't it? Not hardly. A lawsuit was filed on behalf of the wronged policyholders to redress their grievances, and they won in court. In other words, the system worked! Assurant Health payed a hefty penalty and got the bad press to boot, probably sending their customers shopping for a competitor. That's free enterprise. What would be worse is to put Assurant Health in a public pool subsidized by our tax dollars as they fleeced even more Americans who were required by law to buy their lousy coverage. That's ObamaCare. Or imagine a single-payer, government monopoly in which there is no market for dissatisfied customers and all grievances run into a wall of unaccountable, unelected bureaucrats. That's the dream of Obama and the Left. They hope this bill is the first step toward that goal.

But this is much more than a law enforcement issue. For one thing, it’s an example those who castigate President Obama for “demonizing” insurance companies should consider. The truth, widely documented, is that behavior like Assurant Health’s is widespread for a simple reason: it pays. A House committee estimated that Assurant made $150 million in profits between 2003 and 2007 by canceling coverage of people who thought they had insurance, a sum that dwarfs the fine the court imposed in this particular case. It’s not demonizing insurers to describe what they actually do.

Paul contradicts himself here. He already wrote that Assurant had to pay huge amounts of damages. The court fines might have been "dwarfed" (and we don't know because he doesn't reveal the actual numbers), but the damages awarded to the wronged policyholders were substantial. I'm sure this ate considerably into Assurant's profits. How much did they make the next year? They actually lost a lot of business. Isn't it much easier and cheaper to publicize the misbehavior of a few unethical companies and allow the courts to work out the merits of the allegations rather than demonizing every one of them, attempting to fix what isn't broken, and making a federal power-grab for roughly 1/6 of the American economy? It shouldn't take a Nobel Prize in economics to answer that question.

Beyond that, this is a story that could happen only in America. In every other advanced nation, insurance coverage is available to everyone regardless of medical history. Our system is unique in its cruelty. And one more thing: employment-based health insurance, which is already regulated in a way that mostly prevents this kind of abuse, is unraveling. Less than half of workers at small businesses were covered last year, down from 58 percent a decade ago. This means that in the absence of reform, an ever-growing number of Americans will be at the mercy of the likes of Assurant Health.

Believe me, Paul, the stories that happen in other countries are much worse. There's a reason the richest, most powerful people in the world come to America for their health care. Talk to the Brits and Canadians or the Russians if you must. And nobody's flocking to Assurant Health now, I promise you. This is like saying that anyone who invests in the stock market is at the mercy of the Bernie Madoffs of the world. There will always be some bad apples, but we're adults and we can make our own decisions.

The reason fewer small businesses are insuring workers is because they can't afford it. The goal of health care reform should be getting costs down by increasing choice and competition, allowing small businesses to pool together, and passing tort reform. Once costs go down, more people will obviously be able to afford health insurance and the rate of uninsured will logically follow. That makes more sense than forcing people to sign up for government mandated coverage, subsidizing insurance companies to the tune of billions of dollars, and then magically hoping premiums will drop. Why would they? ObamaCare increases the demand for health insurance, and as we all learned in economics 101, high demand causes prices to go up. Your solution is way more cruel and ineffective than the free market could ever be.

Can we afford this? Yes, says the Congressional Budget Office, which on Thursday concluded that the proposed legislation would reduce the deficit by $138 billion in its first decade and half of 1 percent of G.D.P., amounting to around $1.2 trillion, in its second decade.

The CBO score is based on budget gimmicks and trickery that everyone who isn't a kool-aid drinking Obama apologist understands by now. They put the "doctor fix" in a separate bill which adds almost $400 billion to the true cost. They are budgeting for only six years of expenses while adding ten years of revenue. And $500 billion is coming out of an already bankrupt Medicare (in other words IOUs). It's like building an entitlement program on quicksand and hoping no one notices until it sinks halfway down.

The United States is the only advanced nation without universal health care, and it also has by far the world’s highest health care costs.

But we have better care for the most part AND lower taxes. That should stand for something, right? Besides, nothing in ObamaCare guarantees costs will go down. Can you point to anything specific? Even the CBO has said that individual premiums will rise, making health care more expensive than ever and squeezing out the middle class.

Can you imagine a better reform? Sure. If Harry Truman had managed to add health care to Social Security back in 1947, we’d have a better, cheaper system than the one whose fate now hangs in the balance. But an ideal plan isn’t on the table. And what is on the table, ready to go, is legislation that is fiscally responsible, takes major steps toward dealing with rising health care costs, and would make us a better, fairer, more decent nation.

This plan is closer to hell than ideal. It's doubling down on the status quo. It's killing consumer choice and competition. It isn't close to fiscally responsible unless you believe in magic dust and tooth fairies. But then again, none of that really matters to Paul. He gives himself away like all leftists in his last sentence. It would make us "fairer" and "more decent," he says. In other words, we must act because it feels good, even if kills us later. Spoken like a naive child who fails to understand that nothing is less decent or fair than offering a free lunch today only to ask for an outrageous sum in the future.

A vote for Obama's version of health care reform is a pledge to donate a pound of flesh come judgment day. Congress should resist the president's empty and costly promises to stand with the will of the people and vote "No" on this poorly written piece of legislation.

The Epitome of Arrogance

Last month an eleven-year-old worked the air traffic control tower at JFK airport, much to the chagrin of the FAA. A school age kid, after all, has no background or experience in the technology and safety skills necessary to land and direct a two hundred ton jet airliner full of passengers, a delicate affair to say the least. As a result, the workers responsible for that decision were suspended, and I suppose rightly so.

Yet a similar scenario is unfolding in Washington, where the man-child in the Oval Office has decided to direct and control the health care decisions of all Americans, remaking the system to his liking despite no background in medicine, the health insurance industry, or even running a business.

At least the kid landing planes at JFK was being supervised by professionals and didn't believe he had the know-how to permanently replace the entire system. President Obama, meanwhile, has undertaken the massive task of changing our health care system forever by pushing price controls, squashing the freedom of private insurers and doctors, and limiting consumer choice. His whole selling point seems to be, "I know better than everyone." Only a man of extreme hubris would suggest such a solution, one that actually doubles down on the status quo which will make health care more expensive for everybody while adding to the deficit. In fact, no statement showed more arrogance than Obama's statement yesterday when he said:

"I don't know how it plays politically. But I know it's right."

Case closed. The One has spoken. Of course the president knows how it plays politically. The majority of Americans are against this bill. The majority of doctors are against it. The opposition party is completely against it. Not one Republican can get behind this overreaching monstrosity. Even a fair number of Democrats have expressed their opposition. The only bipartisan thing about this bill is that members of both parties will be voting against Obama. But Barack the Magnificent says he knows it's right, so to heck with the rest of us and to heck with democracy. Even if that means changing Senate rules to nuke the filibuster.

We have a tyrant in the White House, one who was elected mind you, but who hasn't listened to the people since. President Obama does whatever he wants to do, not what the people want, and certainly not what Congress wants. Does anyone doubt that he would overreach further if not for the limits placed on him by our Constitution? This is the epitome of arrogance, and while many want to compare President Obama to Jimmy Carter, he's beginning to remind me a lot more of Richard Nixon.

Your Health is Important to Us, Please Stay on the Line

In Canada, it takes an average of six months to get an MRI. Here's what America's future may look like under ObamaCare (or as I like to call it, FauxbamaCare):

Too funny to not pass along. Hat tip: Moonbattery

Fat Government in a Little Coat

If you've ever attempted to put on clothing that says "one size fits all" only to look in the mirror and feel like Michael Moore wearing a coat designed for actual humans and not elephants, you've experienced the essence of universal health care. While most people think of universal as meaning everyone gets covered, this is only part of the definition. What they fail to focus on, and why it's such a horrible idea, is that everyone gets covered exactly the same. In other words, "Fat guy in a little coooaaaat."

Fat guys in little coats. Little guys in fat coats. This is what all socialist programs are really about. The typical progressive can't stand the idea that someone might get better health care than somebody else, even if you have worked hard, have access to doctors that have worked hard, and are willing to pay for it. That wouldn't be fair. Only Congress are entitled to such perks. So they come up with a size that fits everyone, except it leaves most of us inadequately covered and exposed to bad policy by bureaucrats.

Since it's not feasible or affordable to raise everyone up to the highest standard of health care (any more than it is for everyone to drive a porsche), progressives install government stooges (President Obama calls them "experts") to set minimum standards, recommend affordable treatments, and reject expensive and/or innovative ones. You know, the ones that might actually save your life. This is the same reason why those that receive universal health care in England and Western Europe are three to four times less likely than Americans to survive certain types of cancer, including breast and prostate cancer. In Britain, for example:

Just 41.4 per cent of men and 51.4 per cent of women found to have cancer survive longer than five years after diagnosis - down on the 42 per cent and 53 per cent figures previously reported. Experts blame NHS waste, drug rationing and a lack of cancer specialists for the shameful showing.

To which you might ask: If you aren't free to choose the treatment that could save your life, are you really free? Ben Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, architects of our Declaration of Independence, would probably wonder the same thing. What did we have a revolution for if we are going to allow the central government to make such life and death decisions? Therein lies the trillion dollar question and the problem with universal health coverage or Obamacare or whatever you want to call it. I'm gonna call it state-controlled health care, because I feel that's the name that best describes it. The state sets the rules and the state controls what care you get and when you get it. And you pay them for this "privilege". Yet the mainstream media wonders why this is a tough sell in America?!

With state-controlled health care, the government looks over your doctor's shoulder and evaluates every decision he or she makes to see if it's in line with their bureaucratic rules and regulations. These have mostly been determined by bean counters for cost-effectiveness, and in fact, even the patient's contribution to society will be evaluated. Let me stress that again. The worthiness of the patient will be questioned and evaluated. How many "quality years" are they likely to gain from an expensive procedure or surgery? If they're over 80 and the medical procedure will only add two or three years to their life, maybe it's better, as President Obama said, to just have them take a pain killer.

For effect, I used to modestly propose that if you really wanted to reduce the carbon footprint that supposedly contributes to global warming, then we could simply eliminate citizens when they reached a certain age, say 75 or 80. Humanely, of course. The net result being this would reduce consumption of products which add to greenhouse gasses while conserving resources that younger generations need. But my Jonathan Swift solution doesn't seem so satirical now. We have a president who wants to determine your treatment based on how much money it saves the government. And if we're to take Obama's Science Czar at his word, eugenics can't be far behind as a possible solution. Hopefully, not the Final Solution.

Rather than providing more opportunities for more people at the starting line, allowing families to pay into tax-free health savings accounts for example, or letting everyone keep more of their hard-earned paychecks, progressives set their bleeding hearts to social engineering, viewing pictures of inequality one snapshot at a time and setting about to even the playing field, never once examining what's on the videotape that allowed some people to get further ahead than others. Hint: it's not dependency on government.

With state-controlled health care, we are giving up our most important right, our right to life (which let's be honest, liberals have always questioned), and allowing the government to choose doctors and treatments for us based on their needs, not ours. Under Obama's reform, you may not get the treatment you need because it's too expensive. Or you might have to wait too long for the treatment, in which time your condition worsens and during which you are unable to work. While the health care itself doesn't technically cost you money, it's easy to argue that you pay a higher price in pain, suffering, and lost wages.

Progressives are quick to state their opposition to the government interfering in the womb, where oddly enough the government would be stepping in to protect life, but they are A-okay with government interference in the I.C.U. And if it's getting too expensive, your condition is improving too slowly, and they need that hospital bed for an ACORN member, it's good night, nurse. Literally.

This is a choice of wealth (for the government, not the individual) before liberty, servitude before freedom. Passing socialized medicine, universal health coverage, Obamacare, whatever you want to call it, is quite frankly a reversal of our Declaration of Independence. This is tyranny hiding behind the stethoscope, supersized government wearing the little white doctor's coat and offering a diagnosis that flies against the Hippocratic Oath. The truth of the matter is state-controlled health care doesn't cure the sick, it condemns the sick.

We're trading the best health care in the world for the government's best attempt to manage it. This is not capitalism or free enterprise. And it sure as hell isn't liberty. This is a blatant power-grab by a far left statist who believes that what belongs to you belongs to everyone, and by everyone he means the federal government.

Ben Franklin once said, "The only things certain in this world are death and taxes." President Obama is not only committed to their certainty, but he is determined to bring them both about sooner.