Resist ObamaCare at All Costs

There seems to be some resistance building to Obamacare.  And there seems to be a sense that if something doesn’t get done soon, it won’t get done.  This is made more clear by the increasing shrillness and level of distortion coming from the messiah himself.

He has cast his reform plan as a “government-sponsored” plan to “compete with private insurers.”  What does that mean?  Well, government-sponsored means that more tax money is going to be used to pay for health insurance, and taxpayers are on the hook for whatever damn thing the central planners want.  In addition to redistributing wealth, he’ll be redistributing health care from people who have to people who don’t.  Adding free health care to people who weren’t using it before means that we’ll have to ration whatever resources we have.  If it’s going to be free, it has to be limited.

Obama says that the government won’t force change on people who like their current insurance (which is the case for the vast majority of people).  But that’s clearly disingenuous.  One of the ideas on the table would be to tax the health benefits people get through their employers as income.  That would raise the cost of providing the benefit to both employees and their employers, which means employers are likely to either lay people off or reduce their benefits.  That’s unwelcome change, Jack.  If employers have to lower benefits or stop offering the benefit at all, it’ll push more people into the government plan, which raises the current bullshit “estimates” astronomically.  He says he doesn’t want a nationalized health care system, but if his goal is to create a vast new entitlement that forces uninsured people into government health care, then that’s precisely what he’s going to get.

Even his supposed apprehension about nationalization is hollow. Every time he’s nationalized an industry in the last four months, he’s said he didn’t want to, but he did it anyway.  He didn’t want to own banks, but now the government has an ownership stake in the country’s largest banks.  He said he didn’t want to run the housing industry, but now he runs the mortgage industry.  He said he didn’t want to nationalize the auto industry, but his first response to a crisis was to break 230 years of bankruptcy law and nationalize GM and Chrysler.  So when he says he doesn’t want a national, socialist health care system, the natural assumption ought to be that he plans to nationalize and socialize the health care industry.

Anyway, back to the shrillness:

“To those who criticize our efforts, I ask them, `What’s the alternative?’” Obama said at a town hall-style meeting, surrounded by supportive citizens in the heartland.

“What else do we say to all those families who spend more on health care than on housing or on food? What do we tell those businesses that are choosing between closing their doors and letting their workers go?”

One alternative would be to limit liability.  The cost that doctors pay for malpractice insurance has gone through the roof because of absolutely huge legal settlements given to patients.  If you cap the damages that plaintiffs can sue for, insurance premiums will go down overnight.  But since Democrats are beholden to trial lawyers for campaign contributions, we will never see this happen.

Another alternative would be to reduce government interference.  The number of state mandates for insurance companies today is eight times what it was thirty years ago.  Every time governments mandate a new service, the costs of insurance go up.  According to recent column by Mona Charen, some of those mandates include “in vitro fertilization, marriage therapy, smoking-cessation classes, hormone-replacement therapy, chiropractor visits, and so on. That makes it impossible for companies to offer cheap, no-frills, high-deductible plans for the young and healthy.”  If you price the young and healthy out of private health care, the prices have to go up because only the sick bother to get insured.

But you see, for Barack Obama, it’s not about cost.  It’s about control.  Every move he’s made in the last four months has been about extending government control.  And if government can control the nation’s health care, they can regulate anything.  He can control what you eat, because being overweight causes an increased burden on the health care system.  He can control what you drive, because smog from cars could have a tangential impact on health, and SUVs give some drivers and unfair advantage in traffic.  He can control ingredients used at restaurants.  He can control the toys your kids play with, he can write up new “safety” laws, he can tax sugary drinks and alcohol.  He can “suggest” TV habits, and “suggest” exercise, because everything you “choose” to do has an impact on health care.  And no, I’m not saying he WILL do all of those things, but the fact is that he COULD do them because he can make a “moral” and fiscal argument for them based on what he has decided is good for the collective, rather than leaving individuals to make decisions for themselves.  And that’s a ridiculous world to live in.  Once government controls your health, there’s really nothing else that they can’t control.  If the government can control whether you live or die, the idea of the government controlling how much you earn doesn’t seem like so much of a stretch anymore.