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Health Care Reform, Doing the Devil's Work on the Lord's Day

By Jim Odom

Why do I call Health Care Reform the Devil's work?

...and did you notice that the "fix", which deemed the Senate version was passed, happened on Sunday to avoid having Congress take a recess before voting. Also, the House version was passed at 2:00 AM and the Senate version was passed on Christmas Eve.

I call it "The Devil's Work", partially because of what is contained in the law, and partially because of how it was enacted. I know that the Health Care Reform has already passed and was already signed into law this week. I am still amazed at how it was accomplished. I can't imagine how even someone who supported this bill could be proud of the process it went through to become law. The proponents didn't even have the courage to have an up or down vote on the Senate bill that became law. Instead they voted on a “fix” to the Senate version of the bill. If the “fix” passed, it was “deemed” that the Senate version was approved. Thus, Obama was able to sign into law the Senate version of the bill without an official vote on it in the House. I guess Sesame Street will have to go back and add another verse to the School House Rock version of “I'm Just a Bill”.

It seems that bribes are legal if you use taxpayer funds for the bribe instead of personal funds. Nebraska, Louisiana, and Florida got certain “sweetheart deals” because senators in those states held out their “no” votes longer than other senators. So our tax money went to those states to get the “no” votes changed to yes. If the President had offered those same senators money from his own account for those votes, he would be in jail instead of signing the bill into law. How it was passed is just the beginning of why I refer to it as the devil's work. Let's look at what is does to our country.

First of all the cost and availability

Does anyone who thinks rationally believe we can buy insurance for thirty million people and not add to the Federal deficit or cause a shortage of services? The CBO has “scored” this bill to cost just under a trillion dollars over the first decade. That of course takes into consideration that we raise revenue (spelled raise taxes) during the first 4 years and not offer the benefits until 2013 (coincidentally after the next presidential election). Even if you take this very rosy scenario into account, you come up with a very conservative number so large that it is incomprehensible for the average person. To pay for this “free” health insurance, this bill proposes the largest tax increase in our Nation's history, this at a time when we need to be using this revenue to pay down the current deficit. If we raise taxes by one million dollars per day, it will take 2,739 years to raise enough money to pay for this conservative estimate of the cost of this law.

There is absolutely nothing in this law to contain costs of either health care or health care insurance. On the contrary, what do you think will happen when this plan is fully implemented. What do you suppose will happen when we add 30,000,000 people to the insured roles without adding any doctors? Have you ever been to a walk-in clinic or doctors office and seen the little sign at the receptionist's desk that says, “We do not take Medicare or Medicaid”? Why do you suppose a doctor would refuse to take government insurance? (and that's where this law is taking us) The answer is because Medicare or Medicaid does not reimburse the doctor enough to meet his expenses. When this government “take over” of health care reimbursements is fully implemented, doctors will become disillusioned and opt to stay out of the profession. This will lead to further shortages.

Government mandates

Both for individuals and employers are included in this law. If you are an employer and have more than a few employees, you will be compelled to offer health insurance for your employees. If you were an employer, would you be thinking of hiring more or fewer employees right now? If you were presented the choice of a fine or the cost of offering insurance, which would you accept? In many cases the employer would come out financially better off to drop coverage he is currently offering and allow the employee to get their own insurance. This could even thwart the intent of the law and become an unintended consequence.

What about individual mandates. Let's suppose you have only major medical coverage currently and have a very large deductible, say $10,000. Let's suppose you have a health insurance account to pay for minor costs of health care and want to only use your insurance policy for catastrophic illnesses. In this case, the government would not approve your insurance policy and you would have to buy a “government approved policy”, never mind that you can't afford it and don't need it.

The plan in this law is to hire 16,500 new IRS Agents to “police” the new law. If you can't show proof of a health insurance policy that is acceptable to the government, the IRS will be able to enforce fines. I don't know about you, but I'm not in favor of getting the IRS involved in my health care decisions.

Socialism

Definition: Socialism ~ a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.

Definition: Communism ~ a system of social organization in which all economic and social activity is controlled by a totalitarian state dominated by a single and self-perpetuating political party.

Above are just dictionary definitions of the two terms. I am not saying that passing this landmark legislation is causing us to become a Socialist or Communist nation. What I am saying is that legislation like this is causing America to drift further and further towards that type of economy and drift away from capitalism and individual freedom. Capitalism and Corporate profits have almost become dirty words. What ever happened to that “Rugged Individualism” that made America great? When did we become so reliant on government that we decided that the government needed to pay for our insurance?

How Socialism or Communism takes over a country

A good example of how to enslave a people can be gleaned from the following example of how to domesticate and enslave wild horses (or other wild animal for that matter). Step 1: Leave food where they can find it. Step 2: Build one side of a fence just beyond the food. Step 3: Build a second side of the fence on the left side of the food. Step 4: Build a third side to the fence down the right side of the food. Step 5: Build the final side of the fence connecting the left and right sides but leave an opening for the animals to walk through to get to the food. Step 6: You guessed it, close the gate. Americans have taken the food for many years and not noticed that we are gradually being fenced in. We are like the frog in the pot of boiling water, we should have jumped out before it was brought to a boil.

I never thought I would see the day when two of our biggest industries would be Nationalized (taken over by the government). Both Chrysler and GM are now owned by the US Government. The largest banks and one of the largest insurance companies is now owned or regulated so heavily they may as well be owned by the government. When I was younger, I can remember hearing the words, “State controlled Media”, when one was referring to the media in the former Soviet Union. Now everyone cries that FOX News is biased towards Conservatism. That is certainly true to a degree. But without FOX News, all we would hear is the talking points of the Obama Administration.

There is a better way

When did we as a nation decide that the government should provide everything we need. I thought we were guaranteed only the PURSUIT of happiness. It has become quite popular to see how much “free stuff” we can get from the government. We need to stop and remind ourselves from time to time that the government does not have any money. There is a misconception that the government can just print more if needed. The truth is that the government has to either borrow the money or confiscate it from someone else if you get something free.

Adds insult to injury

To make this law even worse, Congress used this occasion to add an unrelated provision. One provision of the new law provides for the government takeover of the Student Loan Program. Heretofore, a student applied to their local bank for a student loan to continue their higher education. The government guaranteed up to 90% of the loan in the event of a default by the student. With the passing of this "Health Care Reform" Law, Congress has taken away the bank's ability to be involved in the loan. Now the student will apply directly to the Federal Government. Funds will come from the treasury and loan payments made will go back into the treasury.

This is just one more example of the Government "Nationalizing" another part of a private industry. This time only one single role of the banking industry was Nationalized, but this is another example of the slow process of government take over. What did this have to do with health care reform? Why was it added to this law? The answer ostensibly was to make the cost of the overall law under a $Trillion. The additional interest income from these student loans brought down the overall CBO "score" for the law, but at what cost. Another private industry partially Nationalized.

Watch for part 2

Everything above is about why I despise this new law and why it is “the devil's work”. In part 2, I will offer some solutions that are almost cost free and actually bring down health care costs and health insurance costs. They involve giving incentives, not mandates to consumers; and get government out of the way of the providers. If you believe we need more government to help us, then you probably believe Nancy Pelosi needs a mask to go out on Halloween.

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Since it is against my religion to use western medicine for healing, I have great reservations about being required to buy a "service" which I cannot and will not use and for which the money I pay goes to others to use in manners which I consider unGodly. Therefore I feel that this unconstitutional law strikes at the very heart of religious freedom in this country, and if left to stand represents the kiss of death to freedom in general.

Saying this I remember the slogan on the New Hampshire license plates, which reads "Live Free or Die."

We don't have a lot of patriots left who will say, "Give me Liberty, or Give me Death!"....Now it's more like, "Give me what I'm entitled to, and I don't care who you take it from!"

While this phenomenal smoke screen has been blinding America, the rest of the world is scared that once again the American terror machine is going to be let loose - this time against Iran - a much stronger opponent than Iraq and which will certainly not be defended by old men and boys while the army pulls well away from the front line.

This whole health fiasco has been orchestrated to give Obama a boost overseas (where health issues are in the public domain - not sold like second hand clothing from a wheel barrow) but we are not so blind.

America is once again treading the very dangerous path of interfering in foreign affairs about which it knows little and about which it cares even less.

One amazing factor that seems to be over-looked all the time is where the 'bean counters' get their numbers. If all the debts that America claims were to be called in, the country would cease to exist. The numbers are so meaningless now that it really doesn't matter what is said. The exercise seems to be to stick some '0's on the end until it sounds impressive. I think the rest of the world is so busy laughing at the American shop keepers (a.k.a. the Federal Reserve) that they are not seeing the disaster that is building as they paint 'Sale' signs on the windows.

My only reply to your comment is maybe to point out how important those zeros are. The federal Government will spend more this year than the first 186 years of our Republic combined. 1776-1974 Soon we will reach a point where the est of the world combined can't finance our debt. Heaven help us when interest rates start going up

It is definitely a big F@#%ing Deal

Thank you for this tremendous information, Jim. We can only hope that before the entire program is put in place, that revisions will be made.
Best wishes.
Frederick

My Rebel Yell is REPEAL and REPLACE

Watch for part II where I offer suggested changes

Hi Jim,
Thanks for sharing.
Here in Australia we have a "Free Health System" for quite some years. In Queensland we had a free hospital system funded by the Golden Casket, until the system became funded by our taxes.
With the extension of life expectancy the costs of the system are increasing exponentially. This is creating more and bigger headaches for the economists trying to cope with all this.

As for the banking sector coming in for regulation. This has had to happen. Their stupidity and irresponsiblity are the main cause of the current world economic down turn. Should they be allowed to do this to us again with their so called self regulation? Personally I don't think so.

There have been experiments with Socialism and Communism that have proved beyond any doubt that those systems fail. Obviously then there needs to be a system that will work. Perhaps some form of regulated capitalism may be the best option.
mmm "Stir the Wallaby Stew, Make soup of the Kangaroo tail"

Anytime you have a quasi monopoly, there has to be stringent regulation. Insurance, banking, utilities, financial services, and credit card providers cannot be left to self regulation. But they also don't need to be taken over and Nationalized by the government either.

"The federal Government will spend more this year than the first 186 years of our Republic combined. 1776-1974"

That is not quite correct - the government will BORROW more. There simply is not enough money coming from taxation and arms sales to support the profligate spending. It isn't rising interest rates you should be worrying about, it is when the lenders simply say 'No more!' After all, the rest of the world doesn't have a bottomless pit of credit to keep bailing out countries that deliberately over-spend (which seems to be most of them).

theoldcoot Mar 28, 2010 01:11

I wholeheartedly agree, Jim. Nice pic of Madame Speaker.

I tried to find one where she looked pretty!!! I gave up after an hour of looking

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