Why Not Barack Obama?
On May 29, 2007 Barack Obama gave a speech in which he made the following statement.
“We now face an opportunity — and an obligation — to turn the page on the failed politics of yesterday’s health care debates… My plan begins by covering every American. If you already have health insurance, the only thing that will change for you under this plan is the amount of money you will spend on premiums. That will be less. If you are one of the 45 million Americans who don’t have health insurance, you will have it after this plan becomes law. No one will be turned away because of a preexisting condition or illness.”
Let’s focus on the scariest part of his plan for socialized medicine. I quote his site below.
Obama will invest $10 billion a year over the next five years to move the U.S. health care system to broad adoption of standards-based electronic health information systems, including electronic health records, and will phase in requirements for full implementation of health IT.
Now, what should scare you about this? If nothing else, the fact that this plan would put the federal government in charge of your personal medical records. With no warrant, with no accusation of wrongdoing, and without due process, the Feds would hold your entire medical record in their database. Does that sound like freedom and liberty to you? Or does it perhaps bring back memories of the KGB and the U.S.S.R.?
Now that we moved past scary, let’s get on to the stupid part.
The Obama plan will create a National Health Insurance Exchange to help individuals who wish to purchase a private insurance plan. The Exchange will act as a watchdog group and help reform the private insurance market by creating rules and standards for participating insurance plans to ensure fairness and to make individual coverage more affordable and accessible. Insurers would have to issue every applicant a policy, and charge fair and stable premiums that will not depend upon health status. The Exchange will require that all the plans offered are at least as generous as the new public plan and have the same standards for quality and efficiency. The Exchange would evaluate plans and make the differences among the plans, including cost of services, public.
Now let’s think about this for a minute, shall we? If the premiums are the same regardless of health status, what does that mean? It means that everyone will pay the same amount. It means the 500 lb guy walking out of the ice cream shop with a triple dip cone will pay the same amount as the health freak walking out of the gym. Wait a second, dear liberal. Was it not you that said we should sue the tobacco industry to make money to offset the healthcare of those who get cancer from their product? And when confronted with the fact that it would raise the price of the product, was it not you, dear liberal, who said it was only fair that those who use the product carry the financial expense? When did this change? I didn’t get that memo.
So, healthcare for all, and a new bureaucracy to boot. The cost? Who knows. We aren’t given a total. All it says is the $50 billion that he will pay for your medical records.
Didn’t freedom once matter? Was there not a time when liberty was more valuable than an over-priced insurance policy? I seem to remember that a great American named Patrick Henry had something to say about this. What was it?
Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
Freedom does have a cost. For Patrick Henry, it was liberty or death. Barack Obama is willing to trade his for a free flu shot. Is that the man you want leading your country?
