Ron - Healthcare Reform Passes

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Ron : Healthcare Reform Passes Ron

Campaign

For Liberty

March 23, 2010

Following months of heated public debate and aggressive closed-door

negotiations, Congress finally cast a historic vote on healthcare late

Sunday evening. It was truly a sad weekend on the House floor as we

witnessed further dismantling of the Constitution, disregard of the will

of the people, explosive expansion of the reach of government,

unprecedented corporate favoritism, and the impending end of quality

healthcare as we know it.

Those in favor of this bill touted their good intentions of ensuring

quality healthcare for all Americans, as if those of us against the bill

are against good medical care. They cite fanciful statistics of deficit

reduction, while simultaneously planning to expand the already struggling

medical welfare programs we currently have. They somehow think that

healthcare in this country will be improved by swelling our welfare rolls

and cutting reimbursement payments to doctors who are already losing

money. It is estimated that thousands of doctors will be economically

forced out of the profession should this government fuzzy math actually

try to become healthcare reality. No one has thought to ask what good

mandatory health insurance will be if people can't find a

doctor.

Legislative hopes and dreams don't always stand up well against economic

realities.

Frustratingly, this legislation does not deal at all with the real

reasons access to healthcare is a struggle for so many – the astronomical

costs. If tort reform was seriously discussed, if the massive regulatory

burden on healthcare was reduced and reformed, if the free market was

allowed to function and apply downward pressure on healthcare costs as it

does with everything else, perhaps people wouldn't be so beholden to

insurance companies in the first place. If costs were lowered, more

people could simply pay for what they need out of pocket, as they were

able to do before government got so involved. Instead, in the name of

going after greedy insurance companies, the federal government is going

to make people even more beholden to them by mandating that everyone buy

their product! Hefty fines are due from anyone found to have committed

the heinous crime of not being a customer of a health insurance company.

We will need to hire some 16,500 new IRS agents to police compliance with

all these new mandates and administer various fines. So in government

terms, this is also a jobs bill. Never mind that this program is also

likely to cost the private sector some 5 million jobs.

Of course, the most troubling aspect of this bill is that it is so

blatantly unconstitutional and contrary to the ideals of liberty. Nowhere

in the constitution is there anything approaching authority for the

Federal government to do any of this. The founders would have been

horrified at the idea of government forcing citizens to become consumers

of a particular product from certain government approved companies. 38

states are said to already be preparing legal and constitutional

challenges to this legislation, and if the courts stand by their oaths,

they will win. Protecting the right to life, liberty and pursuit of

happiness, should be the court's responsibility. Citizens have a

responsibility over their own life, but they also have the liberty to

choose how they will live and protect their lives. Healthcare choices are

a part of liberty, another part that is being stripped away. Government

interference in healthcare has already infringed on choices available to

people, but rather than getting out of the way, it is entrenching itself,

and its corporatist cronies, even more deeply.