My Body, Barack’s Choice
Barack Obama has taken aim at the health care segment of the United States’ private sector. He cleverly refers to it as the “health care system,” and while there is no doubt that the individual components work together in concert, they do so at the behest of the consumer, and not as the monolithic caricature of bloat and greed so vividly painted by his words. Obama claims that this system is so inefficient and morally flawed that it is responsible for crisis within the country, the sole remedy for which is seizure and management by the national government. This crisis claim comes despite the people’s overwhelming satisfaction with their personal health care and the national government’s track record of complete failure overseeing those segments of health care for which it is already responsible – namely Medicare, Medicaid, and associated aspects of the GI Bill.
Despite the lack of either need or popular mandate, Obama is likely to get his way. With a Congress infested with Democrats eager to ride each wave of White House effluence, this Congress has been rubber-stamping itself into irrelevance. Barack’s word is law. Therefore, the question becomes less about probability and more about practicality. How will we in the citizenry (note that the public officials voting on this are exempted from mandatory participation) be directly affected?
Under nationalized health care, the means by which we obtain access to treatment will change fundamentally. The best way to illustrate this is to contrast the status quo with what is coming, so let us first examine the current state of health care.
Under private sector care, the barrier to treatment is financial. There are undeniable, and often substantial prices associated with all manner of treatments and procedures. Sometimes these prices are prohibitively high, effectively imposing a barrier between the treatment and the person seeking it. But this is neither new nor unexpected. Prices exist all around us, and for good reason – they reflect cost, and everything comes at a cost.
For example, the cost of developing a single new pharmaceutical drug ranges from 800 million to 2 billion dollars. A company cannot simply absorb such a cost. This is to say nothing of the packaging, distribution, advertising, and legal expenses necessary to make it available to the public. It would be impossible to incur such massive financial losses and yet still go on performing the research and development necessary to counteract disease. Treatment comes at a cost to the consumer because it first comes at a cost to the producer. Today, obtaining care simply requires a trip to the emergency room. Paying for care, however, requires money, and the amount necessary continues to increase due almost entirely to government intervention (prevention of competition and certain mandatory coverage), a lack of tort reform, abuse of services by illegal aliens, and the use of insurance as if it were a discount card wholly unrelated to the concept of risk. Health care is expensive, and in the words of Obama, “That’s a problem,” but is he seriously asking us to believe that fiscal illnesses are best remedied by the introduction of government?
Under a public health care system, the barrier to treatment is not financial, but bureaucratic. Don’t, however, make the mistake of thinking you won’t pay for it. Not only will you pay, but you’ll pay for it even when you don’t use it. Because your money will be thrown into the giant trough of government funds, the amount you’ll pay will no longer correlate in any way to the care you’ll receive or how often you’ll receive it. This encourages overuse of the system, which in turn raises everyone’s costs, which further justifies overuse of the system, which raises everyone’s costs, and so on.
The primary problem with obtaining care under a single-payer system would be getting the permission to do so – a reflection of the fact that costs do not evaporate just because they are obscured by bureaucracy. The financial aspect has not disappeared; it has simply manifested itself in a less obvious, but more sinister form. The government must determine if and how to help you based upon the projected cost of doing so. The essential question becomes, “What are you worth to the State?” Your life will be reduced to a dollar value, and your ability to access the health care system will hinge upon the result of a simple cost-benefit analysis.
Fortunately, there is no need to try to divine the specific value-of-life judgments that will be made — we already know who will be considered valuable or expendable because the Left has been making those determinations publicly for quite some time. Consequently, we can reasonably conclude how (or if) someone would be treated under a nationalized health system simply by taking note of those whom the Left currently discards. Already, the unborn are aborted, the elderly are euthanized, and the disabled are encouraged to “die with dignity.” Why are these people less fit for life than others? Because they all have one thing in common – each is useless to the State. In fact, from an analytical perspective, each is actually a burden – an unnecessary drain on the system.
So what of the mother who seeks medical attention for complications due to pregnancy? With abortion as a health “option,” the State may often determine that it’s more prudent to abort a pregnancy than to hemorrhage money maintaining it. In order to keep her baby, a woman may well have to go around the law – a back alley salvation, if you will. Gone will be the sacrosanct “woman’s right to choose.” The individual’s right to choose anything pertaining to their personal health care will be jettisoned along with the private sector option.
And what about the elderly and the infirm? During the recent ABC health care special, Jane Sturm, an audience member, told Obama the story of her mother who sought to have a pacemaker installed at the age of 100. She spoke about the reticence of several doctors given her mother’s age, but happily told of one who, won over by her mother’s energetic spirit, agreed to perform the procedure. Now, five years later, her mother is still alive thanks to that surgery.
When she asked Obama how the national system would deal with such cases in which individual circumstances fall outside of statistical norms, he indicated that they might best be dealt with by not dealing with them at all.
“I don’t think that we can make judgments based on people’s spirit; that would be a pretty subjective decision to be making. I think we have to have rules that say that we are going to provide good, quality care for all people.”
As if buoyed by his own sweeping rhetoric, he further offered, “Maybe [your mother is] better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller.”
These words from Obama not only expose his disregard for those whom he has written off, but further comprise a tacit acknowledgment that individuality must necessarily vanish within a publicly-operated health care system. He is right in stating that government cannot account for such outlying and subjective factors as “spirit.” That, however, is precisely the problem. Private sector health care, with its competition and abundance of options, is able to regard the minutiae because the responsibility and decision making is done on the micro level by someone managing his own care. Under the Obama plan, however, the individual’s care is managed by a bureaucrat at the macro level, where the individual is merely an anonymous part of a faceless collective. The things that make us who we are – those outlying factors, our irregular angles of uniqueness – will be sanded down until we fit into the State-sculpted mold of the Generic Citizen. It is to be that, or we die untreated.
But why should the forces of change stop there? With a system controlled by a government that itself is controlled by a radical left-wing racialist (this is the gracious term I use for someone I would only parenthetically refer to as racist), we cannot rule out (and, in fact, should count on) the emergence of identity politics. Will health care be parceled out in an “empathetic” manner? Will certain racial, ethnic, or sexually confused (also gracious on my part) groups be given greater access on the alleged basis that it has been traditionally denied to them? Will Obama be able to resist manipulating health care as a means of combating institutional racism, disenfranchisement, inequality, or any other identity-charged political buzzword? If he is willing to subjugate the law – the very foundation of civilized society – to his personal sense of social justice (as he has done with the “empathetic “ appointment of Sotomayor to the Supreme Court), there is no reason to believe that he would not do the same with health care or any other area within the sphere of his influence.
But wait, there’s more! Beneath the elimination of individuality, lack of access, ever-increasing costs, and political retribution, there lurks the potential for unmitigated corruption, the likes of which we in this country have never seen. Amidst the competing survival instincts of over 300 million people, unscrupulous behavior will become the norm as bribery, forgery, and all manner of dishonesty take hold, effectively denying treatment to the very people the system is touted to help. Their inability to provide government bribes reinstitutes the same financial barrier Obama allegedly sought to dismantle. Then, in addition to being expensive, the system will also be politicized, inefficient, and corrupt. We would be hard-pressed to find a government program not overrun by such egregious, yet common breaches of morality, which is precisely why this system is already ripe for its own oversight committee. Of course, in government, even the oversight committees need oversight, but that probably goes without saying.
As the crowning jewel in this government-endorsed racket, sits the destruction of liberty. In a deftly-played move of political chicanery, we the people would find ourselves in the government’s debt, despite, ironically, having funded the program ourselves. From the beginning of his maiden voyage into responsibility only five months ago, Barack Obama has been transmuting our money into personal political capital. Almost instantly, and under the guise of crisis, he seized taxpayer money, forcibly lent it out to powerful institutions in the private sector, and then proceeded to use their debt as his basis for conquest. Since that time his assaults have been concentrated and relentless. Tony Soprano would be in awe.
It would be naïve to think that you and I would fair any better than the large institutions currently targeted by Obama. In a pattern all too familiar, our money will be seized to fund this program under the guise of crisis, we will be forced to accept it, and Obama will begin micromanaging our lives. We have heard him say that we can’t drive SUVs, set the temperature in our own homes, or determine the amount of food we eat. The first two of these acts of liberty will be toppled by Cap and Trade; the last, by nationalized health care. Citing our acceptance of “government” funds, he will finally have the power to enforce any lifestyle he sees fit because everything – from the things we eat to the things we do – relates in some way to our health over which government will have control. Just as he took over management of those companies that accepted (albeit under duress) “government” funds, he will assume the authority to manage our lives – to make our decisions for us – all in the name of the greater good. Liberty will at last be discarded in favor of government-approved living. He has done nothing to suggest events would proceed in any other way.
Cheer Up, for the Worst Is Yet to Come
A Lot of Hot Air
Environmentalism has been the home of Western Communists and their ilk since the collapse of the Soviet Union. While sharing many of the same philosophical underpinnings, Environmentalism offered what Communism lacked—a crisis.
While cries of impending peril would have fallen on deaf ears (or warranted time in the gulag) under an oppressive regime like the USSR, they are the key to accomplishing a political coup d’état in a free society. Crises are the means by which special interests are able to implement a radical agenda without the headache of subjecting it to a vote. They are often manufactured for the express purpose of bypassing the electoral process, and the media—who love nothing more than apocalyptic headlines—will do their utmost to whip society to a fever pitch over the matter.
Crises, by their very nature, require immediate action. There is no time for costly debate, or to determine the will of hundreds of millions of people. We cannot sit around waiting for the judicial system to determine the constitutionality of a proposed solution, nor can we concern ourselves with long-term ramifications. We will cross that bridge when we come to it.
What actually underlies the Environmentalists’ crisis claims is the desire to eliminate private property ownership. The earth, they say, is too fragile to be left in the hands of individuals. It must be protected (read “controlled”) by the government to prevent further destruction to the ecosystem. But Communism has proven time and again to be far more environmentally destructive than a democracy. With a citizenry bereft of power there are no barriers to government waste and pollution. There is no accountability, so the machine of government marches ahead unchecked leaving behind it a trail of devastation.
The purpose of contemporary Environmentalism is not protection of the environment. If it were, its emphasis would be on keeping the government in check. In stark contrast, Environmentalism seeks to further grow and empower the government by pushing for the seizure of private lands. This is the key to undermining a free society and establishing a totalitarian regime.
When private property ownership disappears, all land belongs to the government, and when that happens there is no safe haven for the individual. The government may police the citizenry anywhere and everywhere they go because all land is public land. Think of political correctness penetrating your life to the extent that your words are not safe even within the confines of your own home and you’ll begin to understand how important private property truly is.
Global warming is just the latest weapon in the Environmentalist arsenal. It is bad science and a gateway to oppression. As long as free societies exist, however, they will constantly be under assault. And when we hear that some crisis or another requires the forfeiture of personal liberty, we can be sure it is happening again.