A Herculean task, but we're valiantly trying to get it done

We've begun the process of analyzing the enormous, 1,018 page (the House legislators probably won't read this one as well, just as they voted on the recent massive carbon emissions bill without so much as a cursory glance) socialized health care proposal that the Congressional Democrats vomited onto the table the other day. This will necessarily take quite some time, but a few quick impressions while we get started:


1. The proposed legislation waits all the way until page 16 to gradually outlaw private insurance over time by starving it of customers, as Investor's Business Daily found out when they began reading it. The smoking paragraph in the bill:

"Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day" of the year the legislation becomes law."

Translation: Insurance companies will be prohibited from signing up any new customers should this bill become law. One will be limited to the private insurance program he or she is enrolled in at the time the legislation goes into effect, and they will not be able to change private carriers or buy a new policy from another company should they change jobs, decide to go into business for themselves or quit working. Big Nanny Government Insurance, being the only legal option left at that point, will be quite happy to sign them up, however.

How convenient.

We agree with IBD, which opines about this blatant strong-arming of private commerce:

"Washington does not have the constitutional or moral authority to outlaw private markets in which parties voluntarily participate. It shouldn't be killing business opportunities, or limiting choices, or legislating major changes in Americans' lives."


2. The Democrats in Congress, along with the Messiah and his henchman Rahm Emanuel, seem to be quite comfortable with the idea of ramming this bill through without a single Republican vote, should that tactic become necessary:

"In entertaining the possibility of a party-line vote on health care, Emanuel cited “reconciliation,” a parliamentary procedure that a dominant party can use to prevent the other party from blocking legislation."

Bipartisanship? That's long gone. The Democrats now have the votes now to pass pretty much anything they wish, and they seem hell bent on doing exactly that.

The one advantage of such a scenario is that the Democrats would be completely responsible for the law and its eventual spectacular failure once the Ponzi scheme runs out of money. How do we know this? Just look at the next section.


3. The same exact program of government-sponsored health care in Massachusetts, only implemented in 2006, is already beginning to fall apart, as evidenced by a hospital just yesterday suing that state for failing to pay the health care costs for poor people as promised, causing the Boston Medical Center to lose 38 million dollars last year, with a projected loss of more than 100 million dollars next year:

"The central charge in the suit is that the state has siphoned money away from Boston Medical to help pay the considerable cost of insuring all but a small percentage of residents."

Naturally, it's all the hospital's fault, according to the incompetents who run the asylum known as Massachusetts state government :

"State officials have suggested that Boston Medical could reduce costs by operating more efficiently."

The stock answer for every problem that will crop up on a national level, you'll soon find out. That tactic works just dandy; until there's nothing left to cut, that is. That's when the rationing will begin, and the peasants will begin to find out just who among them is more "equal" than the others.


4. To gin up support for this monstrosity, the Messiah and his cohorts have taken to calling health care a "right". The only problem with such a label is that it's misapplied; true rights don't require other people to pay for them, as Billy Beck simply (and eloquently) notes:

"Get this straight: you have no right to anything that was produced by others and taken from them by force or its threat."

Yep. Rights such as free speech and assembly, self-defense, protection from unreasonable search and seizure and self-incrimination, as well as the freedoms of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, all cost nothing to other people, and are simply priceless in any event. No one should ever have a claim to the products of others' sweat and toil simply because the moochers desire those items.


5. Please keep in mind the many examples we regularly provide here of the stark horrors of the liberal-idealized socialized medicine scheme in England, which is very similar to what's been proposed for America. We do this in order to inform everyone of the "quality" of care that the Messiah wishes to impose on the peasantry in this country.

Want a fresh story? Certainly. The Daily Mail reported only yesterday that:

"Thousands of rheumatoid arthritis sufferers face a lifetime of agony because they are not being treated quickly enough"

Instead of beginning treatment within three months of diagnosis, essential for establishing control of the disease in order to limit painful and permanent joint damage and halt the potentially fatal progression of the disorder to the heart and lungs, British subjects with RA are unfortunately finding out that:

"the average wait is nine months - and GPs are not trained well enough to know what help to offer." (Emphasis mine)

So people suffering from excruciating pain over there are being forced to wait three times as long as recommended, and the incompetent doctors don't know what they are doing when the patients' numbers do finally get called. That certainly sounds like an A-Number One health-care system to model ours after, doesn't it?


6. James Pethokoukis of Reuters lists 9 more reasons why this scheme to instantly nationalize one-sixth of our economy forever is a disaster waiting to happen, if anyone needs another viewpoint on the subject.


Much more later, once we have the time to really delve into the bowels of the proposal.