It’s been almost two weeks since the Supreme Court upheld the President’s healthcare reform bill. Plenty of time for all sorts of wild stories to circulate through the media about what it “really means for you.” The spin doctors are still hard at work. And they’re succeeding to some degree, with recent reports showing an upswing in support for the law. At the same time, it’s galvanizing the die-hard opponents of this “government take-over” to heed Chief Justice Roberts thinly veiled advice to seek redress at the polls, not just the courts.
But having spent so many years as a Washington insider, allow me to shed some light on this topic for you. And expose it for what it really is.
Because truth be told, the President’s healthcare reform bill was most fundamentally a fraud from the beginning–one that hardly ever gets addressed by all the media “experts.”
First of all, it does little to truly reform our model of healthcare delivery. Nor to meaningfully control costs. It makes almost no inroads at all in replacing dangerous, ineffective, expensive, useless, and counter-productive “care” with safer, effective, proven, available, and less expensive care which would be more accessible to all. I’m talking about REAL reform that would address the White House’s obsession with “access, affordability, and fairness.”
There are so many effective cures that the average American can afford right now, right out of pocket, without having to rely on any “third party.” They wouldn’t need insurance company bureaucracies or the absolute worse bureaucracy of them all, the federal government. But you won’t hear about these affordable cures in the healthcare “reform” bill.
Plus, the President always maintained that “Obamacare” would not be another tax on the already overtaxed, overburdened U.S. middle class. But it is now obvious that a tax is exactly what it is.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who is normally exceptionally fair and knowledgeable of the Constitution, did not want to be seen as another partisan “activist” judge by overturning a law made by Congress in 2010. (Albeit the Pelosi/Reed-rigged Congress which forced the law through on a totally partisan and unethical basis).
But incredibly, Roberts just became an “activist” in a far worse way…
You see, as written, the mandate that each individual must buy health insurance would have required an unprecedented and dangerous expansion of federal government power under the commerce clause of the Constitution. One clearly and unconditionally opposed by the minority opinion by the four truly conservative justices. Chief Justice Roberts also correctly found that provision unconstitutional. So he redefined the requirement as just another “tax” under the taxing authority of the Constitution.
As such, it will be one of the largest taxes in American history.
We desperately need to be cutting back on tax-and-spend government—not expanding it.
But what do you expect? This is the “in-and-out,” “hope and change” crowd. That steps “in” only to keep “out” real reform. And whose main “hope” is that nothing will ever really “change.”
This bill also represents a huge expansion of the Medicaid system, which is already overburdened and notoriously rife with waste, fraud, and abuse. And the Supreme Court found some significant problems with this aspect of the healthcare bill as well.
In particular, Medicaid would largely become even more of a coercive tool for the federal government against the states. They could withhold Medicaid funds from states until they comply with every aspect of the new law. So states that are already struggling with their budgets (and have to actually balance them, unlike the feds) would, essentially, be thrown to the wolves.
I’m sure you remember what happened the last time the states were in trouble. The President initiated his “economic stimulus” plan. With spending that turned out to be largely hand-outs to keep useless government bureaucrats on the payroll. And did nothing to create real jobs or improve the economy.
This time, the President may be causing even bigger problems for the states. And Congress isn’t likely to authorize yet another government hand-out (i.e. “stimulus”) program.
But perhaps the most frightening part of this newly upheld, nearly 3,000-page monstrosity ? No one will really know exactly how it will affect the American people until the bureaucrats start implementing it! After all, Pelosi incredibly stated they would first have to “pass the bill to find out what’s in it…” I’m afraid that the only people really reading it will be the legions of even more new federal health bureaucrats hired for the express purpose of putting it into play.
For argument’s sake, let’s assume for just a moment that all the legislative and legal contortions of the current healthcare reform law are justified. Even if that were the case, who could possibly trust the federal government with any “take-over” of the healthcare system? (Which accounts for one-sixth of our economy, by the way.)
Name me one thing in the past half-century that has succeeded or been improved by putting the government in charge.
I write quite a bit about the history of medicine here in the Daily Dispatch and in my Insiders’ Cures newsletter. Our western medical tradition has its roots in ancient Greece. I am now afraid that our healthcare system—and our country—are well on their way to emulating Greece’s modern economic mess. And this disastrous, doubly fraudulent version of healthcare “reform” is now leading the charge into the abyss.