A Voice in the Wilderness In Defense of "Mere Conservatism"

Obama Democrats: Cashing checks and burning bridges

Mark Steyn is the most interesting political commentator alive.  As I knew he would, in his newest column Steyn lays out the reasons the House and Senate health care "reforms" will lead to ruin for this country.

Government can’t just annex “one-sixth of the US economy” (ie, the equivalent of annexing the entire British or French economy, or annexing the entire Indian economy twice over) and then just say: “Okay, what’s next? On to cap-and-trade…” Nations that governmentalize health care soon find themselves talking about little else.

Being a native Canadian himself, Steyn explains what things are like back in his homeland:

In Canada, once the wait times for MRIs and hip surgery start creeping up over two years, the government distracts the citizenry with a Royal Commission appointed to study possible “reforms” which reports back a couple of years later usually with recommendations to “strengthen” the government’s “commitment” to every Canadian’s “right” to health care by renaming the Department of Health the Department of Health Services and abolishing the Agency of Health Administration and replacing it with a new Agency of Administrative Health Operations which would report to a reformed Council of Health Policy Administrative Coordination to be supervised by a streamlined Public Health Operations & Administration Assessment Bureau.

This package of “reforms” would cost a mere 12.3 gazillion dollars and usually keeps the lid on the pot until the wait times for MRIs start creeping up over three years.

He then points out one of the most disturbing facets of the secretively conceived legislation:

Whatever happens, it’s a dagger at the heart of American federalism, just as the bill’s magisterial proclamation that the Independent Medicare Advisory Board can only be abolished by a two-thirds vote of the Senate strikes at one of the most basic principles of a free society – that no parliament can bind its successors.

Do you understand what is happening here?  The Democrats have put into their bill, the 2,000 page one that almost none of the senators have even read, a caveat that stipulates that only a 2/3's majority can undo what they've done.

Think about this.  They don't have the votes to pass a constitutional amendment that would allow the government to run health insurance (which will almost instantly lead to government-run health care), yet they write into the bill a rule that makes it nearly impossible to change things later if their system ends up failing or further wrecking the economy.

The Democrat operators – the Nancy Pelosis and Barney Franks – know that what matters is to get something, anything across the river, and then burn the bridge behind you. My Republican friends often seem to miss the point in this debate: The so-called “public option” is not Page 3,079, Section (f), Clause VII. The entire bill is a public option – because that’s where it leads, remorselessly.

The so-called “death panel” is not Page 2,721, Paragraph 19, Sub-section (d), but again the entire bill – because it inserts the power of the state between you and your doctor, and in effect assumes jurisdiction over your body. As the savvier Dems have always known, once you’ve crossed the Rubicon, you can endlessly re-reform your health reform until the end of time, and all the stuff you didn’t get this go-round will fall into place, and very quickly...Government-run “health care” is the fast-track to a permanent left-of-center political culture.

The Left has been pushing for this (socialized medicine) for almost a century now.  PLEASE hear these words from Ronald Reagan warning in the 1960's against what is happening now.

Anyone who supports this current legislation and isn't a committed socialist is a sap.