Health reform will increase dependence

President Bill Clinton once declared, “The Era of Big Government is over!” And it now appears that he was right. We will soon be longing for the days of “big government” now that the “Era of Gargantuan Government” – or possibly the “Era of Omnipotent Government” – is upon us.

The Imperial Congress narrowly approved the hostile takeover of the American health care system Sunday. The bill was hailed as a way to extend health care to some 32 million Americans who are currently not covered by insurance of some kind. In typical liberal fashion, the other 275 million of us are supposed to feel good about supporting and caring for those 32 million helpless individuals.

If you voluntarily want to help someone by paying for their medical bills, that’s called charity. But when the government forces you to give up your money and your rights in support of someone else, that’s not charity. It is tyranny.

It is true that there are people in circumstances that are difficult and that there are people who genuinely need a helping hand. But there are also a great many people in this country who are freeloaders and only want something for nothing. This health reform caters to the second group while pointing to the sad stories of the first group.

It is, in fact, none of the federal government’s business whether you have health insurance. Constitutionally, it is really none of its business whether you ever even go to the doctor or get treatment for an illness. That’s up to you and private medical service providers.

But the reality of the situation is that the government has made this its business. With Medicare and Medicaid and a host of regulations, it has thrust itself into the doctor-patient relationships of millions of Americans. And no one can really say that it has been a financially sound decision. Medicare and Medicaid both have budget woes; and Medicare, like Social Security, is currently on the road to bankruptcy.

It makes no sense for the government to further tangle up this mess. A better solution would have been to enact market-driven reforms and gradually reduce people’s dependence on the government. The opposite is now happening – more government and more dependence. Politicians and bureaucrats will gain more power; and if they can’t squeeze enough taxes to cover the cost, Uncle Sam will just put it on his Chinese charge card.
Someday – some sweet day – either the federal government’s finances will collapse, or the People will take this country back. Let’s hope it’s the later, and let’s hope that day is in November.

Meanwhile…
Barack Hussein Obama is destined to be remembered as one of the greatest men in American history.

(I’ll pause as you catch your breath.)

Yes, the health care reform bill is now the law, and President Obama will justly get the credit for it. He will be mentioned in the same breath as Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and take his place in the pantheon of American Presidents… or at least Democrat Presidents.

Two years ago this column said that the Democratic Party deserved a candidate like Barack Obama – someone who believes wholeheartedly in the goals of the national party and will stand up for and work hard to achieve those goals. And that’s exactly what they got – a man who inspires his party and takes the country in the direction he believes it should go.

Now unfortunately, that direction is one in which the government runs every damn thing and freedom, personal responsibility, and a market economy are just ideas that receive lip service.

Critics of the Democratic Party have for years said the party stood for weak foreign policy, government regulation of the economy, higher taxes, higher spending, and the expansion of the welfare state to take care of everyone from the cradle to the grave.

To be sure, not every self-labeled Democrat in America believes all that or wants it to come true. But that is what the national party stands for, and it is evidenced by the actions of Mr. Obama and all the leftists, commies, social radicals he has surrounded himself with and by the mindless lemmings who clearly make up the majority of Democrats in Congress.

The health bill is just the first accomplishment that Obama’s future biography will list. Within it is the nationalization of the student loan program. And if health reform was passed this easily, it won’t be long before the federal government moves to approve sweeping energy legislation and enact further controls over the financial system – whether the American people want it to or not.

Under Obama and his followers in the Congress, the American government is moving to the left and drifting even further from its Constitutional moorings. It remains to be seen how far the People and the States will let this go, but it is certain that reversing this course will be extremely difficult.