The latest version of health-care legislation from the house is a monstrous 1,990-page tome. That is thicker than “War and Peace.” It weighs more than 9 pounds and is 4 inches thick. Being hit by such an object is considered assault in most communities. That is what the various forms of health-care legislation that have been generated by Congress are, an assault on the American people.
The bill promises to save the American people money over what private insurance companies will charge. After all, the claim goes, the government doesn’t have to make a profit. On the other hand, the government has shown a poor record of cost containment over the years. Private businesses are held accountable for their costs by the investors.
Government spending has not been held accountable to the American taxpayer. Moreover, the current Democratic legislators certainly do not to even consider themselves accountable to the American voter.
The government now wants to hold private insurers’ costs accountable to a government control czar. The czar would determine whether an insurance company’s cost of providing coverage is too high.
The legislation stacks the deck against private insurance companies by increasing taxes on them and the employers who use private insurers to provide benefits to their employees. Hence the cost of health coverage through private insurance companies promises to be higher that it otherwise would be.
The government sets the rules, restricts competition, blocks tort reform, decides how costs are calculated for the government, and legislates higher taxes on what it considers to be competitors to its program. What conclusion do you think a government czar will make when deciding which plan is better, the government-run plan or the private one with legislated higher costs? Which do you think the czar will mandate out of existence because of high costs? It is an assault on our intelligence to think they can put something over on us in this manner.
The real measure of this or any legislation is the means used to bring it about. In his book “Winston Churchill, CEO,” author Alan Axelrod talks of a moral continuum between ends and means. They cannot be severed from one another. Any legislation that tolerates unethical acts, or requires un-American behavior to achieve it is unethical and un-American in its being.
This is true of the current health-care bills in the House and Senate. When elected officials ridicule freedom of assembly, deny freedom of expression, threaten citizens’ freedom to present their grievances to the government in order block criticism of health legislation, they are practicing a form of totalitarianism. It is right then to question whether the legislation itself is un-American.
Both the House and Senate bills contain provisions to bully people and businesses to accept the government program. Once Americans accept their rights being denied, there is no end to the demands that will be placed upon us or to the humiliations that we will be required to endure. That is why the current health-care legislation should not pass.
