They will all be fighting over the $$$....first the profits, then the stocks, then the cost of products, then consumers, then the workers
the public has a view that "those guys/gals up there have enough money to go around to pay for everyone".......
What does the pie look like? I dont think it is a pie.........
Here's the thing,,,I will stay out of your things(pockets/house etc) and you had better stay out of my things,,,,,people have what they have because they have what they have,,,,,everyone think they are worth more than they get paid, IF that is their measurement of themselves......
Walmart is burning the candle at both ends and is the catalyst for the oxymoron of 'Government Choice' ........
Who is their task master in Washington? They chose to use Walmart and any other large American corp as an "economic war machine" across the globe using politics as usual and for the good of society.......
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
Obama Open to Partisan Vote on Health-Care Overhaul, Aides Say
By Edwin Chen
July 14 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama may rely only on Democrats to push health-care legislation through the U.S. Congress if Republican opposition doesn’t yield soon, two of the president’s top advisers said.
“Ultimately, this is not about a process, it’s about results,” David Axelrod, Obama’s senior political strategist, said during an interview in his White House office. “If we’re going to get this thing done, obviously time is a-wasting.”
Both Axelrod and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said taking a partisan route to enacting major health-care legislation isn’t the president’s preferred choice. Yet in separate interviews, each man left that option open.
“We’d like to do it with the votes of members of both parties,” Axelrod said. “But the worst result would be to not get health-care reform done.”
House Democrats today unveiled legislation totaling about $1 trillion that would expand health care to millions of Americans over the next decade by raising taxes on the wealthiest households. The Senate has yet to agree on a bill as Democratic lawmakers struggle to get Republican support.
Emanuel, making a theoretical case for a party-line vote, offered a definition of bipartisanship based not on roll-call votes but on whether Democrats have accepted Republican ideas during the process of negotiations.
And he said Democrats already have passed that test, pointing to Republican amendments that the Democratic-controlled Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee has adopted.
Republican Ideas
“That’s a test of bipartisanship -- whether you took ideas from both parties,” Emanuel said. “At the end of the day, the test isn’t whether they voted for it,” he said, referring to Republicans. “The test is whether the final product represented some of their ideas. And I think it will.”
Analysts and some veteran political practitioners have inveighed against a partisan approach on such a contentious issue.
They include two former Senate majority leaders -- Robert Dole, a Republican, and Tom Daschle, a Democrat, who is a close White House adviser on health-care issues.
During a joint appearance in June as the two unveiled their own bipartisan health-care proposal, Dole said he believed Democrats could pass a bill by a party-line vote, even as he expressed disapproval of such a tactic.
“I hope it doesn’t come to that,” Dole said. “If there’s not a Senate Republican vote for the package, then the American people are going to be very skeptical.”
Don’t Assume ‘Unanimity’
The Democrats have 60 votes in the Senate to 40 for the Republicans, and have a 255-178 advantage in the House, with two vacancies.
Daschle said he “couldn’t agree more” with Dole’s warning about the political fallout from a partisan vote.
Moreover, he expressed doubt that Democrats alone could prevail, because that scenario “assumes unanimity” he said, and that isn’t the case.
Time is running short for the House and Senate to pass the legislation before their August recess, the deadline Obama has set. In entertaining the possibility of a party-line vote on health care, Emanuel cited “reconciliation,” a parliamentary procedure that a dominant party can use to prevent the other party from blocking legislation.
I love how in our no-good country with it's no-good health care system, a woman can get a mammogram in a van in the parking lot during lunch, like an ice cream cone or a hot dog, but in socialist countries it takes months to line that up. We all have to jump up and say "TEAR IT DOWN, DAMMIT" as bolsheviks intent on plunging us into darkness cajole us into stupidity and self-destruction. I am sure good "Catholics" and their priests will be calling out for this new form of deathcare too.
Good government is one of those expressions that doesn't really add up.
"While Foreign Terrorists were plotting to murder and maim using homemade bombs in Boston, Democrap officials in Washington DC, Albany and here were busy watching ME and other law abiding American Citizens who are gun owners and taxpayers, in an effort to blame the nation's lack of security on US so that they could have a political scapegoat."
DEM HEALTH RX A POI$ON PILL IN NY TERRIFYING 57% TAX LOOMS FOR BIGGEST EARNERS Read Comments Leave a Comment By CHARLES HURT IN DC and DAVID SEIFMAN AND JENNIFER FERMINO IN NY, Post Wire Services
Congressional plans to fund a massive health-care overhaul could have a job-killing effect on New York, creating a tax rate of nearly 60 percent for the state's top earners and possibly pressuring small-business owners to shed workers.
New York's top income bracket could reach as high as 57 percent -- rates not seen in three decades -- to pay for the massive health coverage proposed by House Democrats this week.
The top rate in New York City, home to many of the state's wealthiest people, would be 58.68 percent, the Washington-based Tax Foundation said in a report yesterday.
That means New York's top earners, small-business owners and most dynamic entrepreneurs will be facing new fees and penalties.
The $544 billion tax hike would violate one of President Obama's ironclad campaign promises: No family will pay higher tax rates than they would have paid in the 1990s.
Under the bill, three new tax brackets would be created for high earners, with a top rate of 45 percent for families making more than $1 million. That would be the highest income-tax rate since 1986, when the top rate was 50 percent.
The legislation is especially onerous for business owners, in part because it penalizes employers with a payroll bigger than $400,000 some 8 percent of wages if they don't offer health care.
But the cost of the buy-in to the program may be so prohibitive that it will dissuade owners from growing their businesses -- a scary prospect in the midst of a recession.
Obama took to the airwaves yesterday with ads and TV interviews promoting the need to reform health care.
As a Senate health committee passed a different version of a health-care reform bill - a milestone for the issue - Obama said on NBC, "The American people have to realize that there's no such thing as a free lunch."
And in a Rose Garden speech, he said the "status quo" on health care is "threatening the financial stability of families, of businesses, and of government. It's unsustainable, and it has to change."
Asked if Obama supports the surtax on wealthiest Americans even though it would break a campaign pledge, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said only, "It's a process that we're watching."
Republicans in Washington and small-business defenders in New York said the House legislation would effectively place a stranglehold on businesses while running off top earners.
Massachusetts in Suit Over Cost of Universal Care LinkedinDiggFacebookMixxMySpaceYahoo! BuzzPermalinkBy ABBY GOODNOUGH Published: July 15, 2009 BOSTON — A hospital that serves thousands of indigent Massachusetts residents sued the state on Wednesday, charging that its costly universal health care law is forcing the hospital to cover too much of the expense of caring for the poor.
The hospital, Boston Medical Center, faces a $38 million deficit for the fiscal year ending in September, its first loss in five years. The suit says the hospital will lose more than $100 million next year because the state has lowered Medicaid reimbursement rates and stopped paying Boston Medical “reasonable costs” for treating other poor patients.
“We filed this suit more in sorrow than in anger,” said Elaine Ullian, the hospital’s chief executive. “We believe in health care reform to the bottom of our toes, but it was never, ever supposed to be financed on the backs of the poor, and that’s what has happened in Massachusetts.”
The central charge in the suit is that the state has siphoned money away from Boston Medical to help pay the considerable cost of insuring all but a small percentage of residents. Three years after the law’s passage, Massachusetts has the country’s lowest percentage of uninsured residents: 2.6 percent, compared with a national average of 15 percent.
Low-income residents, who have benefited most from expanded access to health care, receive state-subsidized insurance, one of the most expensive aspects of the state plan. But rapidly rising costs and the battered economy have caused more problems than the state and supporters of the 2006 law — including Boston Medical — anticipated.
According to the suit, Massachusetts is now reimbursing Boston Medical only 64 cents for every dollar it spends treating the poor. About 10 percent of the hospital’s patients are uninsured — down from about 20 percent before the law’s passage in 2006. But many more are on Medicaid or Commonwealth Care, the state-subsidized insurance program for low-income residents.
One of the state’s reimbursement rates to Boston Medical, dropped from $12, 476 in 2008 to $9,323 by 2009, the suit says.
Wendy E. Parmet, a professor at the Northeastern University School of Law, said the suit was “a step in a wider minuet” as state lawmakers, health care providers and other stakeholders try to figure out how to make the new law work in the long term.
“I think it’s going to be a very hard lawsuit for them to prevail on,” Professor Parmet said of the hospital. “I think they’re trying to bring another weapon into what is essentially, in many ways, a political and economic battle going on in the state about how to pay for health care, and making sure their voice gets heard.”
The suit comes as Congress looks to Massachusetts as a potential model for overhauling the nation’s health care system. Even before the suit, the state’s fiscal crisis had cast doubts on the law’s sustainability.
To help close a growing deficit, the Democratic-controlled Legislature eliminated coverage for some 30,000 legal immigrants in the new state budget. Gov. Deval Patrick, a Democrat, is seeking to restore about half of the $130 million cut, but lawmakers have expressed reluctance, saying that doing so would require cuts to other important programs.
State officials expressed surprise at the lawsuit, saying that Boston Medical received $1.5 billion in state funds in the past year and should not be seeking more in the midst of a fiscal crisis.
“At a time when everyone funded and served by state government is being asked to do more with less, B.M.C. has been treated no differently,” said Dr. JudyAnn Bigby, the state secretary of health and human services, in a prepared statement. “We are confident that the administration’s actions in this area comply with all applicable law and will be upheld.”
State officials have suggested that Boston Medical could reduce costs by operating more efficiently. The state has also pointed out that the hospital has reserves of about $190 million, but Tom Traylor, the hospital’s vice president of federal and state programs, said the reserves could only sustain the hospital for about a year.
“The magnitude of the loss here can’t be solved on the program-cutting or expense-cutting side,” Mr. Traylor said. Professor Parmet said the hospital’s dissatisfaction with the new law should be a warning to Congress that “insurance alone doesn’t solve the problems” of the health care system. In fact, she said, it might exacerbate the financial problems of safety-net hospitals in the short term.
obama wants this passed and law by august. They are rushing this through just like the stimulus!
the speed of light!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
Updated July 16, 2009 – 12:52 p.m. CBO Chief: Health Bills To Increase Federal Costs By David Clarke and Edward Epstein, CQ Staff The health care overhauls released to date would increase, not reduce, the burgeoning long-term health costs facing the government, Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf said Thursday.
That is not a message likely to sit well with congressional Democrats or the Obama administration, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., said Thursday she thinks lawmakers can find ways to wring more costs out of the health system as they continue work on their bills.
The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Democrat Max Baucus of Montana, who has not yet released a bill, said his panel is acutely aware of the long-term cost concern. “Clearly our committee will do what it can,” he said. “We are very seriously concerned about that issue. We very much want to come up with a bill that bends the cost curve.”
But Baucus suggested the White House is making the task difficult with opposition to one cost-cutting approach Elmendorf cited — limiting or even ending the tax exclusion for employer-provided health benefits.
The Democrats and President Obama have cited two goals in their overhaul proposals — expanding coverage to the estimated 47 million Americans who currently lack it and bringing down long-term costs because the growth in Medicare and Medicaid spending threatens to swamp the federal budget in coming years.
Under questioning from Chairman Kent Conrad , D-N.D., Elmendorf told the Senate Budget Committee that the congressional proposals released so far do not meet that second test.
“In the legislation that has been reported, we do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount and, on the contrary, the legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health care costs,” he said.
Elmendorf was not addressing the narrow question of whether the Democrats’ legislation would be budget-neutral over 10 years. Congressional Democrats and the White House have promised to offset the cost of health care legislation over that period.
But budget analysts and some members fear the legislation will not slow the growth of health care spending enough to prevent it from overwhelming the federal budget after that 10-year window.
Earlier this week, House leaders introduced their overhaul plan, which is being considered by three committees this week.
Elmendorf said that CBO has not completed its evaluation of the House plan, but what it has seen so far does not represent “the sort of fundamental change, the order of magnitude necessary to offset the direct increase in federal health costs from the insurance coverage proposals.”
Senate Bills The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee approved its draft bill Wednesday, and Christopher J. Dodd , D-Conn., the acting chairman of that panel, said his panel had reduced the initial price tag of its bill as estimated by the CBO. “I’m very confident we can meet the president’s goal of having a fully paid-for 10 year program on health care right around $1 trillion,” he said.
Senate Finance, not the HELP Committee, has jurisdiction over the tax code and Medicare — the areas Elmendorft targeted for savings. Dodd complained that CBO refuses to assume that government savings will occur from an increased focus on wellness and preventive health care. “The only thing CBO does is tell you how much taxpayer money has to be invested to achieve those results,” Dodd said. “We believe we have crafted legislation that does bend that curve, bring health care costs down and make it affordable for all Americans,” he said. “I appreciate their work, but frankly we’re on the right track, we have a solid bill and one that’s affordable.” The Senate Finance Committee has yet to release its overhaul proposal, and Elmendorf said he did not want to publicly discuss the conversations he has had with members of that committee, including Conrad. When asked what could be done to help “bend the curve” of health care costs over time, Elmendorf pointed out that most health experts believe the tax exclusion for employer-provided health insurance is an area that could help reduce costs. Many experts say the exclusion encourages high health care spending since it shields workers from the cost of their coverage. Baucus took aim at Obama on that point. “Basically, the president is not helping us. He does not want the exclusion” to be capped or eliminated, he said. None of the congressional plans released so far address the tax exclusion, and it is not clear whether Finance will tackle the issue. Many experts also have told CBO that altering the Medicare payment system so that it emphasizes cost effectiveness, rather than fees for services as the current system does, would also help, Elmendorf said. “Delivery system reforms,” Baucus said, would be “a game changer in this bill.” However, he told reporters two days ago that the payment reforms in his bill and in the House bill are more similar than they are different. And those would not significantly alter the current system. Surtax vs. Cost SavingsMeanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that if more cost savings can be produced in the legislation now being assembled in the House, a proposed $544 billion tax surcharge on the wealthiest Americans could be scaled back.
As three House committees began marking up the health care overhaul bill (HR 3200), Pelosi told reporters that she thinks the legislation can eventually wring more costs from the health system. “I believe all the costs of the health care reform bill can come out of squeezing costs out of the health care system,” she said. But then she added that even if that were true, the revenue from the proposed surtax would be needed to help with startup costs associated with making changes to the health system and for reducing the big federal budget deficit. “We have to have a revenue stream to pay for it,” she said of the bill. “If we don’t need it, we can use it to reduce the deficit,” Pelosi said. Under questioning, she said that some of those high-income taxpayers who would face the proposed surcharge might get a break. “If we can get more savings, perhaps we can cut it at the high end,” Pelosi said. Under the surtax plan spelled out by the Ways and Means Committee, the bottom two surtax rates would disappear if health care savings to the government exceed $175 billion by 2013. But those rates would double if the government fails to save at least $150 billion. Pelosi said she wants to encourage House members to propose more structural changes that could wring costs out of the system. “More structural changes? Absolutely. They are already significant, “she said, referring to the proposed legislation unveiled Tuesday. “Can there be more? Absolutely,” she added. Pelosi said she remains confident that the legislation can be changed enough to bring on board many of the Blue Dog Democrats who have threatened to walk away from a bill that they see as too expensive. Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry A Waxman , D-Calif., plans to meet with Blue Dogs to see how their concerns can be addressed. “What we’re saying is, let the process unfold in the public process,” Pelosi said. She said members are getting a chance to speak up in the committee markups, then in the Rules Committee and finally on the floor. She said the bill will be on the House floor in the last week of July, which would fulfill her pledge to have the House vote on the bill before it leaves for its long August recess. Alex Wayne, Jane Norman and John Reichard contributed to this story.
WE CANNOT LET IT HAPPEN......I work for my benefits....I know it's NOT free.....NOTHING IS FREE......people get what they put in, personally.................taxes are just taken and we dont get what we put in.......but as individuals we have ALLLLLLLLLL the choice, ability to do what we want, get what we want and work how we want.......if that is ingrained in our small little impressionable minds in school......
however, the school system is so intent on filling in the blanks with numbers, tests and keeping everything equal/smooth running that they forgot to teach about CHOICE/RESPONSIBILITY/RESULTS.......
shame on us and shame on our school systems that we have built with the masses of sheeple......sounds like the 'detroit syndrome'......."why bother learning much in school, I'll just work at the factory like dad, granddad, great granddad etc....."
there are no Podunk towns,,,,,this here is a Podunk minded generation-----WHY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What is in the water????
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
It's Not An Option By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, July 15, 2009 4:20 PM PT
Congress: It didn't take long to run into an "uh-oh" moment when reading the House's "health care for all Americans" bill. Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal. IBD Exclusive Series: Government-Run Healthcare: A Prescription For Failure
When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee. It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of "Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage," the "Limitation On New Enrollment" section of the bill clearly states: "Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day" of the year the legislation becomes law. So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won't be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers. From the beginning, opponents of the public option plan have warned that if the government gets into the business of offering subsidized health insurance coverage, the private insurance market will wither. Drawn by a public option that will be 30% to 40% cheaper than their current premiums because taxpayers will be funding it, employers will gladly scrap their private plans and go with Washington's coverage. The nonpartisan Lewin Group estimated in April that 120 million or more Americans could lose their group coverage at work and end up in such a program. That would leave private carriers with 50 million or fewer customers. This could cause the market to, as Lewin Vice President John Sheils put it, "fizzle out altogether." What wasn't known until now is that the bill itself will kill the market for private individual coverage by not letting any new policies be written after the public option becomes law. The legislation is also likely to finish off health savings accounts, a goal that Democrats have had for years. They want to crush that alternative because nothing gives individuals more control over their medical care, and the government less, than HSAs. With HSAs out of the way, a key obstacle to the left's expansion of the welfare state will be removed. The public option won't be an option for many, but rather a mandate for buying government care. A free people should be outraged at this advance of soft tyranny. Washington does not have the constitutional or moral authority to outlaw private markets in which parties voluntarily participate. It shouldn't be killing business opportunities, or limiting choices, or legislating major changes in Americans' lives. It took just 16 pages of reading to find this naked attempt by the political powers to increase their reach. It's scary to think how many more breaches of liberty we'll come across in the final 1,002.
July 17, 10:02 AM · Rick Robbins - Louisville Economic Policy Examiner
In an interview with CBS News, President Barack Obama noted that increasing taxes on the wealthy is a ‘good idea’ when it comes to finding a way to pay for his proposal to nationalize the healthcare industry. As noted in my previous article, increasing taxes is nothing new for Obama or any other Democrat – it is simply what they do. However, it was somewhat disturbing to hear how Obama described the wealthy. Here are a couple of statements from his interview:
I think the best way to fund it is for people like myself, who have been very lucky and are in the top -- not just 1 percent, but top half percent -- of the income ladder to pay a little bit more.
The general notion that those of us who are the best off can pay a little bit more upfront to help reform a system that will save us money over the long term, I think that's a good idea.
First off, the latter statement is certainly reminiscent of Obama’s ‘spread the wealth around’ comment that he made to Joe the Plumber during the presidential campaign. Of course in this case he is saying that the wealthy should pay more so that the poor will save money. But as the CBO has just reported, there is no guarantee that the current healthcare reform proposals will do anything to actually save money and are more likely to increase costs instead.
Obama’s first statements were much more disturbing though. He implies that wealthy people, like himself, have merely been ‘lucky’ to achieve their status in life. Perhaps that is true in Obama’s case - who used the Chicago political machine to advance his career, used his career and Senatorial earmarks to advance his wife’s career and get her a $200,000 pay raise and used his racist reverend to develop the title of one of his best-selling books. Being lucky and/or having the right connections seems to have benefited Obama quite nicely.
However, most wealthy people are not just lucky. Instead they are hard-working and/or brilliant entrepreneurs, creative and/or persistent salespeople, dedicated former students who were able to graduate from the best universities, researchers who develop products that enhance all of our lives and a countless number of small-business owners. Sure there are some people in the upper tax brackets who are just lucky like heirs to mass fortunes like those in the Kennedy family, lottery winners and actors. But a survey of the wealthiest Americans would certainly find more people who achieved their status by working for it than those who got there just by luck.................>>>>................>>>>...............http://www.examiner.com/x-6996.....rners-are-just-Lucky
"Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day" of the year the legislation becomes law. So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won't be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.
WTH does this mean? I am yet again speechless! Like benny always says, 'where is the outrage'???
It amazes me that people are just so STUPID! Private health care is so figgin expensive because of all of the government mandates. Ya know...cover the pill, cover viagra, cover abortions, cover addictions and the list goes on and on. Funny isn't it how people are just craving for government health care and yet they won't and don't want to pay for it themselves. People seem to have no problem maintaining their cars. Spending hundreds and thousands of dollars per year on the bucket of bolts, but God forbid that they have to pay for something to maintain themselves!
They say they can't afford it? Well they can first thank the government for placing so many mandated on these private insurance companies. Second, I'm sure they all have cell phones and computers. But that is obviously more important. The parents can't afford to take their kid to the doctors but can sure as hell afford to by them computers.
Ok...I'll get off my soap box now!!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
Editorial: Health plan merits passage Sunday, July 19, 2009
Anyone can appreciate President Obama’s desire to win bipartisan support for legislation as monumental as a health-care reform plan, but it’s become increasingly clear that Republican leaders are not going to let that happen. Just as they did with the economic stimulus program, they’re acting as obstructionists, which is their prerogative — even though Democrats were more accommodating when Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush first took office and proposed similar legislative overhauls. The good news is that Obama’s plan, which has a lot going for it, may not need Republicans’ approval to win passage. Yes, it’s expensive — slightly more than $1 trillion over 10 years — but it’s going to go a long way toward solving a big problem in this country: 46 million people without health insurance. Half of the money would come from reduced spending on Medicare and half would come from income tax hikes on the wealthiest 1.2 percent of all Americans: families with annual income over $350,000 (most of whom had their taxes slashed during the Bush years). Thus the program would not increase the deficit. While the plan would get the government deeper into the health insurance business, it would not be at the expense of private insurers who, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates, would enroll two out of every three new people. The Obama plan is also designed to help stem the overall rise in health-care costs, but on that count the CBO was less optimistic Thursday. While some concessions have been extracted from drug companies, hospitals and doctors, they appear not to be enough to truly tame ruinous health-care inflation............>>>>...............>>>>...............http://www.dailygazette.com/news/2009/jul/19/719_pfint/
A day can’t go by without hearing horror stories from countries where government has taken control of health care: People being put on waiting lists that are sometimes years long to get surgery; people being denied needed medicine because the government deems it “too expensive.” We hear of British hospitals in appalling states, of Canadians having to cross the border to get life-saving treatments, of people waiting months for a simple MRI, and of dramatically lower cancer survival rates. Government in these countries has brought to health care the same inefficiency and unaccountability that our government brings to things like the DMV, IRS and military contracts. Waiting in line for the DMV is annoying, but rarely lethal. Waiting for a tax return is frustrating, but rarely will kill you. Waiting for bureaucrats to get their act together while you’re sick or hurt? Not a chance a sane person would want to take. The Constitution does not grant government the power to control your health, and through it, your life. Any government health-care program will invariably infringe on property rights (over your own body), equal protection under the law, and Ninth and Tenth Amendment protections. Obama says he wants a “public option” to increase competition. He doesn’t say that the hundreds of insurance companies already existing provide plenty of competition, and that more price-lowering competition would exist if government didn’t dictate what health plans must cover and prevent people from buying insurance from out of state. Obama is creating an unconstitutional program that will use taxpayer money to undercut private plans. Since his program will be controlled by government, he and his liberal cronies will be able to set the rules in its favor. We’re not looking at reform here, we’re looking at decreased quality, decreased choice and an overbearing government pushing further and further into the lives of the sovereign citizens it is supposed to be serving.
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