Posted on 06/27/2009 3:24:09 PM PDT by mukraker
Doctors take a Hippocratic oath, the most well-known portion being to do no harm to their patients. It’s time Congress applies this maxim to their health care proposals and to the plethora of wasteful social engineering programs they’re rushing to enact.
We’re told 49 million Americans have no health care. What we’re not told is that of those 49 million, at least 12 million are illegal aliens. Another 12 million are people who already qualify for some form of government-subsidized health insurance. And another 12 million are people who could otherwise easily afford to buy their own health insurance, but who choose not to.
This fallacious argument about 49 million uninsured is the dubious reason we’re given to justify the latest unconstitutional takeover of yet another private sector of our economy, the nationalization of America’s health insurance industry.
By the way, don’t we already have a national insurance plan? Look at your next pay stub, that little deduction line that reads FICA. That stands for the Federal Insurance Contribution Act. Remember, Social Security was supposed to be a voluntary program.
It doesn’t matter that 85% of Americans with insurance say they want to keep their current insurance programs. Congress and the Obama Administration are plowing ahead with plans to ultimately force us all into a one-size-fits-all health insurance program administered by the federal government.
Businesses will be forced to provide some form of health insurance to their employees. Those that don’t will be penalized with higher taxes. So will they choose to buy private insurance, or by into the taxpayer-subsidized (lower cost) public insurance?
The socialists in Washington say we need public health insurance in order to introduce competition to the insurance market. Because the hundreds of private insurance companies don’t already compete for your health insurance dollars.
This national health insurance program will have a “wellness component.” So the bureaucrats will be able to tell you that you must exercise, or lose weight, that you can’t eat foods that have too much sugar or salt, that you must stop smoking/drinking, or whatever the politically-correct fitness fad de jur happens to be.
We’ve been assured that this new federal health insurance program will reduce overall costs and won’t result in rationing of medical services. We’re told costs will be reduced through an as yet undefined reduction in expenses and elimination of waste.
Our federal government is assuring us it will reduce waste if only they administer this new program. After all, they’ve done such a wonderful job with the Medicare and Medicaid and Veterans Administration programs.
When government bureaucrats start talking about “efficiencies” in health care, they’re talking about rationing. It will be up to some unknown bureaucrat to decide if you’re life is valuable enough to “invest” precious health care resources into. And those decisions can and will change with the political winds.
The legislation doesn’t say how all this will be accomplished. It’s being left to the bureaucrats at the FDA to figure it all out. After all, such a policy worked so well when they left it to the Treasury Secretary to figure out how to spend the $700 billion in TARP bailout.
We’re supposed to believe adding 49 million more people to the ranks of those covered by health insurance and curbing medical reimbursement payments to doctors and hospitals will somehow make the whole system more efficient.
To pay for their new medical insurance program, Congress is proposing to tax your employer-paid health care benefits. Oh, unless you belong to a union. Union health care benefits would still be exempt from taxation. And Members of Congress would be exempt from the law, too. Yet another case of do as I say not as I do.
Congress’ own accountants in the Congressional Budget Office say even after all this, this legislation will still leave 39 million people uninsured. Yet it will cost in excess of $1.6 trillion.
Meanwhile, the legislation says nothing at all about reforming the nation’s tort laws. Those are the laws that allow someone to sue for millions in malpractice cases. Insurance companies all say that if such malpractice awards were limited to actual expenses associated with the malpractice, plus a limited amount as a penalty (punitive damages), say $250,000, they could reduce insurance premiums for everyone.
It’s not surprising, considering the nation’s trial lawyers contribute heavily to the Democrats now in control in Washington.
There’s also nothing in the legislation to provide for personal health care savings accounts. If you’re able to invest after-tax dollars into a medical savings account, and aren’t running to the emergency room every time your kid coughs, you can negotiate with most medical providers for lower fees if you’re willing to pay them directly, without having to go through an insurance company or a government payment system. There’s also nothing allowing someone to buy health insurance across state lines and avoid having to pay for state-mandated insurance coverage for conditions a patient will never need.
It doesn’t seem to matter that absolutely none of this is authorized by the Constitution. Our federal government shall have only those powers delegated to it by our Constitution. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
Just four years ago, in the case of Gonzalez v. Raich (a case involving the use of marijuana of all things), Justice Clarence Thomas had this to say in a dissenting opinion: “If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything—and the federal government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers.”
Justice Thomas went on. “If the Federal Government can regulate growing a half-dozen cannabis plants for personal consumption (not because it is interstate commerce, but because it is inextricably bound up with interstate commerce), then Congress’ Article I powers—as expanded by the Necessary and Proper Clause—have no meaningful limits.”
Thomas continued. “If the majority is to be taken seriously, the Federal Government may now regulate quilting bees, clothes drives, and potluck suppers throughout the 50 States. This makes a mockery of Madison’s assurance to the people of New York that the “powers delegated” to the Federal Government are “few and defined,” while those of the States are “numerous and indefinite.“
You see, at their very core, these cases are not about the use of marijuana or paying for insurance or any other social engineering program, but are about the Powers of the federal government to dictate to its citizens what they may or may not do.
And then you have the Waxman-Markey cap-n-trade “energy” bill (H.R. 2454) that plowed through the House by a vote of 219-212 (roll call vote number 477), with virtually no one having read the 1500+ page bill. They got away with it on the stimulus bill (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act), so why not try it again…and again…and again….
The rumblings of a new American Revolution have reached critical mass.
I think Congress stopped being Public servants long ago....More Self Serving.....
Better number: at maximum, 11 million are actual US citizens.
At least 75% of the proposed budget will go toward care for illegial aliens.
And some of it will go to ‘pain killers’ for anyone from Boomer ages on up.
If doctors kept the Oath, there would be no Abortion doctors.
Best to do a ‘means test’ on those seeking gov’t insurance. And while at it, a citizenship test. Kick out the failures of the latter and those that can afford insurance should be forced to do so.
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