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2010
Soap Box Archives March Madness Something is in the air. The cheers, the boos, the fierce competition, the thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat are more evident than ever. No, I'm not talking about college basketball; I'm talking about the Obamacare bill that congress just rammed down the throats of the American people. I knew it was going to happen, but I kept hoping and praying that somehow the votes wouldn't be there. Eventually, all the bribery and deal cutting worked flawlessly, and the bill was passed in the House of Representatives 219-212. Even Bart Stupak, the pro-life Democrat who many thought would be the key to keeping the bill from passing was won over by the White House. This is truly one of the darkest days in American history, and to quote TN Rep. Marsha Blackburn, "Freedom dies a little bit today." If I hadn't been so disgusted, I would have chuckled when I heard Nancy Pelosi ranking the historic importance of Sunday night's vote right up there with Social Security and Medicare. Last I checked both of those entitlement programs were steamrolling towards bankruptcy, and yet we continue to barrel down that road. So Nancy Pelosi is saying the same government that bankrupted both Social Security and Medicare, and runs the post office at a 7 billion dollar deficit annually will somehow manage to keep from screwing up the best health care system in the world. It's just more of the same from the liberal/progressive/statists that are in control of the Democrat party. Yes, there have been plenty of progressive Republicans, but this vote is 100% owned by the Democrat Party, and they will be the ones held responsible. Hopefully, the progressive Republicans have learned a lesson or two from this, and will lean more towards the smaller government conservative ideals that the party is supposed to reflect. Yes, John McCain, this means you. I won't lie to you, folks. This bill is bad news for America. Yes, we need to fix some things in our health care system, but we need to reduce costs instead of mandating that we must all buy government-approved health insurance and forcing insurance companies into bankruptcy by requiring them to cover preexisting conditions. For those that regularly listen to Rush, you have probably heard him describe how health insurance works. Essentially, the insurance companies are taking a risk, - gambling if you will - that the individual they are insuring won't get sick. When they do have to pay on a claim, the money comes from premiums paid by other customers who they have also taken a risk on, and it evens out. The health insurance industry's profit margin is only approximately 3-5%. By comparison, in 2008 Yahoo!, Hershey's and Tupperware each made 5.9%, 6.1% and 7.5% respectively. It's just another attempt by liberals to demonize an industry to further an agenda. Molson-Coors made a profit of 8.1% in 2008, maybe the government should go after "big beer" next. The bottom line is that if the government forces insurance companies to cover every person with a preexisting condition and insure them for the same price as someone with no health problems, the health insurance companies will be bankrupt in less than 5 years. But this is by design. The progressive Democrats, including our president, want a complete government controlled single-payer health care system, and when the insurance companies collapse, the government will be all that is left. It's that simple. Obama is on record on multiple occasions saying that he was a proponent of single-payer government run health care, but he also said that they might not get to it right away, but he could envision it a few years down the road. In other words, baby steps. You see there are plenty of House Democrats who had planned to vote against the bill - or did - not because they were opposed to a government expansion of powers in health care, they opposed it because it didn't go far enough and include a government run public option. Dennis Kucinich was one of those holdouts who opposed the bill, until he had a private meeting with President Obama. I can only guess what was said when Kucinich met with Obama on Air Force One, but I would imagine that the president told him, "Baby steps." Whatever was said, it was enough to convince Kucinich to vote for the plan, so he must've liked what he heard. One other bit that hasn't gotten a lot of attention was that with potentially 30 million new people being brought into the system, that we will likely be faced with a shortage of doctors, especially if what a survey of physicians by the Medicus Firm is true. The report states that 46% of the primary care physicians they surveyed would leave, or try to leave medicine if health care reform was passed. Yes, you can keep your doctor… if you can find him. The cost of this monstrosity is also a major concern, considering we're up to our eyeballs in debt with the Chinese, and we're just committing ourselves to another trillion dollars (at least) in spending over 10 years. To hear the Democrats say that this measure is "deficit neutral" is laughable. Taxes start kicking in very soon and will be increasing over the next few years. The only way the CBO can say it's deficit neutral is because there are 10 years of taxes being collected on coverage that largely doesn't take affect until 2014, so there will be 4 years worth of tax dollars in the coiffeurs before the bulk of the plan even goes into effect. Another aspect of the bill, which isn't being talked about much, is how it will affect student loans, because with its passage, the federal government will now be the sole provider of student loans. This can't be a good thing. Neither can the fact that the I.R.S. will now be in our lives monthly, instead of just on April 15th, but it will add another 16,000 jobs, so we've got that going for us. We don't need health care reform; we have the best health care in the world. People come from all over the world to get treated here. What we need is health COST reform. If congress really wanted to make health care more affordable for everyone, I've got two words… Tort reform, tort reform, TORT REFORM! Okay, that was two words, three times… six altogether, but you get my meaning. If doctors didn't have to carry massive amounts of malpractice insurance because of so many lawyers out to hit the jackpot, then health care costs would drop significantly, and really making health care more affordable for all Americans, but the Democrats hardly gave tort reform a glance. Why? Last year DNC Chairman, Howard Dean, spelled it out for us. He said, "The reason tort reform is not in the bill is because the people who wrote it did not want to take on the trial lawyers in addition to everybody else they were taking on. And that's the plain and simple truth." But the dirty little secret is that this isn't about health care, it's about control of our lives, and this is what will make it very hard to repeal. This is liberal progressivism/statism at it's most basic. The more people who are dependent on the state, the more likely that the party who is providing the entitlements will be re-elected, and that means more votes for the Democrats. Things could really get ugly if the administration makes its expected push for amnesty for illegal aliens. This is why
it is so crucial that the constitutional challenges are successful.
So far, 14 states have already brought lawsuits challenging the constitutionality
of the bill, and constitutional attorney and talk show host, Mark Levin,
and the Landmark Legal Foundation is planning to mount a challenge as
well. It's an uphill battle, but to steal a slogan from the opposition, "Yes we can!" For most hard working, freedom loving Americans, it really makes us furious that in addition to banning trans fats and telling us that we must use mercury-filed fluorescent light bulbs because they know what is best for us, they now disregard the will of the people and pass this health care bill for the same reason; liberals think they know what is best for us, and the best solution for any problem is more government. And for everyone who is living in "Obama Fantasy Land" and is happy about the direction our government is heading, remember what Thomas Jefferson said, "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have." And that's the damn truth! Charlie Daniels, Jr.
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