Is Congress about to sell out the American people in the name of progress and change? The healthcare debate is the epicenter of a larger fight, one that resurfaces every few decades; one that began with the writings of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. The role of the Federal Government in our lives is growing quicker than Congress can print the money to support it. Are there no better options than those that we are faced with today?
The current debate is misguided. If you take out abortion funding, it is still a bad bill. If you take out illegal alien coverage, it is still a bad bill. If you take out the public option, it is still a bad bill. In fact, until we address the cost, no bill will work. The President and Congress believe we can cut waste and fund a 1 trillion dollar program. They should do what no Congress in 30 years has been able to do–cut the waste first. Why do we need to cut waste in the same bill that re-spends the savings? If Congress were serious about this avenue of funding, they would address the waste first. Where would the debate be today if Obama and Pelosi held up a realized savings of 500 billion dollars from their efforts to cut waste and said “Now, let’s find a way to get every American covered.”?
As the healthcare accusations continue to fly, there is a palpable undercurrent in the air that the Democrats and Progressives are trying to stay away from: their desire to increase the size and scope of the government. The Tea Party crowd gets this, and so does Obama. On Sunday with Bob Schierffer, Obama said, “I have no intention of increasing the size of government”. Very empty words indeed, since the following day on Dave Letterman, Obama characterized our problems as stemming from too little government and indicated that the answer to our problems is more regulation and more involvement by the government in our daily lives
So, why the two messages? It is to hide the endgame of the healthcare debate. On one side you have the majority of America which does not favor socialized programs in their Federal Government. On the other are the drivers behind the progressive movement, including Obama.
No matter what federal healthcare bill we get, it will move this country toward a more socialized system. Unless we start over on healthcare, there will be no winning side in this debate for the American people. Healthcare reform has to start with the free market; it is the only system that will deliver cost competitiveness and quality care. At the heart of the current House and Senate plans is an effort to maintain an insurance structure that has contributed to incredible cost increases by removing the monetary transaction from the doctor-patient relationship. Rather than addressing this, both of the current plans keep the existing insurance structures and try to introduce competition between providers rather than competition at the service location. Both keep the bloated medical billing process in place and, if anything, add to the bureaucracy and paperwork required of medical professionals.
The current healthcare system is a mess; nobody likes their insurance company. But we are using healthcare as a proxy for a larger argument. The progressives and Obama have repeatedly called for a single payer plan. There is no plan on the progressive side to have a hybrid private public plan such as the Senate bill. They have an interest only in a plan with a public option. The public option, they have stated, will fail, and its failure will lead to a single payer plan. Watch Obama, Franks, and others in their own words:
So, if our leaders are to be believed, what we are really debating is the single payer plan. In a larger sense, we are debating an expanded role of the Federal Government in our lives. That role does not just end with healthcare. It is our new executive compensation Czar, our diversity in broadcasting Czar, Cap and Trade, and government equity positions in the banking, automotive, and newspaper industries. Again, we went to bed in January with a housing crisis and woke up in April with nationalized banks, nationalized auto makers, and the government in control of our energy supply. We woke up in a world where the Administration and ACORN can intimidate families by bussing paid protesters to the homes of private citizens. We are already headed down a path to a government that is out of control.
We are not debating this or that provision in the healthcare bill — we are debating our capitalist free-enterprise system versus socialism. In this argument, the progressives have one gotcha statement that they bring up over and over again which is, “Conservatives complain about socialism but are willing to use socialized fire, water, and police in their communities.” This argument, however, is flawed in that it actually proves the small Federal Government point. Each socialized service that liberals mention is a local government function. Yes, local government supplying services to the local community is a good thing. But in the same vein, do the progressives who tout a strong federal socialist government want to rely on the federal government for municipal water, their fire department, or police? Imagine if the federal government supplied these services– we saw how efficient the federal response was for Katrina.
If you apply the Federal Government versus local government argument to healthcare, many more options become available. Not only have we not explored the role of local government in healthcare, we have missed the fact that it should not even be addressed at the federal level. According to the Constitution most government services should be local. Providing healthcare is not a right reserved for the Federal Government and is therefore left to the states. Shouldn’t any discussion of healthcare include options that already exist at the state level? Instead of an all encompassing federal program, how much more efficient would block grant funding be for programs already in existence in our local communities?
3602 Responseshttp%3A%2F%2Fmainstreetradical.com%2F2009%2F09%2F23%2Fthe-health-care-debate-that-we-are-almost-having%2FThe+Health+Care+Debate+that+We+Are+Almost+Having2009-09-23+19%3A46%3A13James+Deverehttp%3A%2F%2Fmainstreetradical.com%2F%3Fp%3D360 to “The Health Care Debate that We Are Almost Having”
The federal Constitution has already decided against Obamacare. Sadly, the only reason that liberals and conservatives keep arguing about Obamacare is this, IMO. Evidently nobody on either side of the fence knows the Constitution anymore. Please consider the following.
The truth of the matter is that US citizens have evidently not been teaching the Constitution and its history to their children for many generations, particularly the constitutionally enumerated principle of state sovereignty evidenced by the 10th Amendment. Consequently, the people do not understand that, since the federal Constitution is silent about programs like Obamacare, the 10th A. automatically reserves government power to regulate and lay taxes for such things to the states, not the Oval Office and Congress.
In fact, Chief Justice Marshall had established the following case precedent, now wrongly ignored, which appropriately limits the power of the feds to lay taxes.
“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” –Chief Justice Marshall, GIBBONS V. OGDEN (1824)
So not only is misguided Obama’s proposed healthcare constitutionally unauthorized, but based on Justice Marshall’s official words, the corrupt Congress never had the power to lay taxes to fund such a program in the first place.
What’s going on, IMO, is that state sovereignty-ignorant voters have been electing lawmakers to both the state legislatures and the federal senate who are as state sovereignty-impaired as the voters are. Consequently, these lawmakers have not been doing their jobs to protect state sovereignty by protecting citizens from illegal federal taxes and unconstitutional federal government interference in their lives, as evidenced by the threat of illegal Obamacare.
Finally, the following link should help give people an idea how state sovereignty-ignorant voters have shot themselves in the foot with big, corrupt federal government as a consequence of the ill-conceived, anti-state sovereignty 16th and 17th Amendments.
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The federal Constitution has already decided against Obamacare. Sadly, the only reason that liberals and conservatives keep arguing about Obamacare is this, IMO. Evidently nobody on either side of the fence knows the Constitution anymore. Please consider the following.
The truth of the matter is that US citizens have evidently not been teaching the Constitution and its history to their children for many generations, particularly the constitutionally enumerated principle of state sovereignty evidenced by the 10th Amendment. Consequently, the people do not understand that, since the federal Constitution is silent about programs like Obamacare, the 10th A. automatically reserves government power to regulate and lay taxes for such things to the states, not the Oval Office and Congress.
In fact, Chief Justice Marshall had established the following case precedent, now wrongly ignored, which appropriately limits the power of the feds to lay taxes.
“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” –Chief Justice Marshall, GIBBONS V. OGDEN (1824)
So not only is misguided Obama’s proposed healthcare constitutionally unauthorized, but based on Justice Marshall’s official words, the corrupt Congress never had the power to lay taxes to fund such a program in the first place.
What’s going on, IMO, is that state sovereignty-ignorant voters have been electing lawmakers to both the state legislatures and the federal senate who are as state sovereignty-impaired as the voters are. Consequently, these lawmakers have not been doing their jobs to protect state sovereignty by protecting citizens from illegal federal taxes and unconstitutional federal government interference in their lives, as evidenced by the threat of illegal Obamacare.
Finally, the following link should help give people an idea how state sovereignty-ignorant voters have shot themselves in the foot with big, corrupt federal government as a consequence of the ill-conceived, anti-state sovereignty 16th and 17th Amendments.
The 16th & 17th Amendments and the big, corrupt fed. gov.