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Posted on 07/20/2009 4:11:31 PM PDT by rabscuttle385
Political philosopher Richard Weaver famously and correctly stated that ideas have consequences. Take for example ideas about rights versus goods. Natural law states that people have rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A good is something you work for and earn. It might be a need, like food, but more “goods” seem to be becoming “rights” in our culture, and this has troubling consequences. It might seem harmless enough to decide that people have a right to things like education, employment, housing or healthcare. But if we look a little further into the consequences, we can see that the workings of the community and economy are thrown wildly off balance when people accept those ideas.
First of all, other people must pay for things like healthcare. Those people have bills to pay and families to support, just as you do. If there is a “right” to healthcare, you must force the providers of those goods, or others, to serve you.
Obviously, if healthcare providers were suddenly considered outright slaves to healthcare consumers, our medical schools would quickly empty. As the government continues to convince us that healthcare is a right instead of a good, it also very generously agrees to step in as middle man. Politicians can be very good at making it sound as if healthcare will be free for everybody. Nothing could be further from the truth. The administration doesn’t want you to think too much about how hospitals will be funded, or how you will somehow get something for nothing in the healthcare arena. We are asked to just trust the politicians. Somehow it will all work out.
Universal Healthcare never quite works out the way the people are led to believe before implementing it. Citizens in countries with nationalized healthcare never would have accepted this system had they known upfront about the rationing of care and the long lines.
As bureaucrats take over medicine, costs go up and quality goes down because doctors spend more and more of their time on paperwork and less time helping patients. As costs skyrocket, as they always do when inefficient bureaucrats take the reins, government will need to confiscate more and more money from an already foundering economy to somehow pay the bills. As we have seen many times, the more money and power that government has, the more power it will abuse. The frightening aspect of all this is that cutting costs, which they will inevitably do, could very well mean denying vital services. And since participation will be mandatory, no legal alternatives will be available.
The government will be paying the bills, forcing doctors and hospitals to dance more and more to the government’s tune. Having to subject our health to this bureaucratic insanity and mismanagement is possibly the biggest danger we face. The great irony is that in turning the good of healthcare into a right, your life and liberty are put in jeopardy.
Instead of further removing healthcare from the market, we should return to a true free market in healthcare, one that empowers individuals, not bureaucrats, with control of healthcare dollars. My bill HR 1495 the Comprehensive Healthcare Reform Act provides tax credits and medical savings accounts designed to do just that.
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Ping
Exactly
It’s not really a good. It’s a service. But it sure ain’t a right, and it won’t be a right under Obamacare either. It will probably be more difficult to obtain, in fact.
O is a shakeoil salesman fot the international bankers.
Very well said.
I don’t always agree with Ron Paul, but sometimes he is spot on.
BTW - Saw your VT / UVA joke. Daddy graduated from UVA, my Uncle from VT. They are gonna love it. I probably should be careful - I attended neither school, but when I wore a VT cap home he threatened to write me out of the will.:^)
An economic good can be either a physical object or a service. It is only required that it has marginal value to people; i.e., it can be sold for a non-negative price in the market.
The fact that this man wasn’t taken seriously during the primaries is conclusive evidence of just how screwed up the Republican party is currently.
I don't believe for one second that the Rats are trying to push "healthcare reform" down our throats because they want to do something "good" for the uninsured and because they want to cut healthcare costs. There's something they want to steal.
What is it?
Having grown up in the Chicago area, I know that every politician in Illinois is a crook. I also know that Obama isn't calling the shots.
So, what are they trying to steal. Is it just to drive money to phoney healthcare companies that the Rats will be setting up? I think it must be more than that.
What a koooooook!! He’s just an undercover trooooooofer!! Shrimp!!!! Pork shrimp!!!!!
(Do I really need a tag?)
If there were only some way to keep "Good Ron Paul" in the forefront, and leave "Bad Ron Paul" in the shadows...
Sorry. I don’t recognize a “bad” Ron Paul.
Part of his vote buying machine.
>So, what’s the scam that the crooks in Washington are trying to pull?
I don’t believe for one second that the Rats are trying to push “healthcare reform” down our throats because they want to do something “good” for the uninsured and because they want to cut healthcare costs. There’s something they want to steal.
What is it?<
It is complete control over all your information. A very important issue when you think about all it entails. They get all your records and dictate how you live by the costs that they place on you. For instance smokers will be charged extra or be denied care because they smoke, but drug treatment is fine.
So a smoker gets screwed, but heroine addicts are taken care of without any reprisals.
They get your mental health records and find out if your “stressed” forget your guns, your a danger to society.
Depleting you of your money (in NY taxes will be at a projected 51% now - and that still won’t be enough) - they also control business practices this way and take cash from them. Not part of the government health care plan - 8% tax because of it.
Basically they decide who gets treatment, too old to keep alive, not cost effective ... your gone.
Have dementia or Alzheimer’s? You don’t need health care, you won’t realize your sick anyway.
Then there is of course all the 12 - 14 million illegal aliens that get adopted through this bill that they want anyway, these are guaranteed democratic voters!
Not understanding our laws, what the government is really about and how it should work, they can cajole foreigners very easily to elect them with promises that they can’t keep.
need I go on?
That's certainly an element of it, but with the crooks we have in Washington these days (and particularly, with the thugs from Chicago), there's always something more mundane that will directly line their pockets in time. These are simple-minded, short-term thinking folks who are out for the smash and grab.
There's got to be something we're not seeing yet.
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