Pay Your Tithing

So if President Obama made a public announcement tomorrow that he had a plan to end world hunger within his term would you believe him? How about if he proposed to have a plan to end war? Or a plan to eradicate world poverty? Would you believe that? So why do the majority of Americans believe that this administration can provide quality, accessible, affordable health care to everyone in America? Where does such faith in our government spring from? What evidence do we have for the success of such an undertaking from real life experience? Pray tell. History would indicate you might make it affordable at the expense of quality or preserve quality but not lower costs without limiting access -but not both. Maybe some things just aren’t fixable. Is capitalism a failure because not everyone in the country has free 21st century health care? Why isn’t the measure of our success that fewer die of cancer now than at any other time in human history? That life expectancy continues to rise? That miraculous new treatments and drugs appear every year?

The Obama administration, like the Clinton administration before it, believes itself to be able to succeed in delivering the big health enchilada where all else have failed. What’s even more bedazzling is that the voters saw fit to endorse this ‘reform’ without even having heard the plan. That’s what I call the ‘Audacity of Hope’! Even now, as this epic piece of legislation looms forbiddingly on our horizon, a seemingly unarrestable act of nature, there are no details whatsoever about how universal health care can be affordably provided; just some vague rumblings about a parallel public system to compete with the private. ( Maybe they could publish this new plan on the internet and let us read it before they vote on it like they did with the trillion dollar plus stimulus bill? ) They have endeavored to lead us to believe that all that is necessary to pay for this mother of all leviathans is to raise taxes on the top 3% of wage earners, cut compensation to a bunch of rich doctors and break the backs of those evil, rich drug companies, insurers and HMOs. But now the train’s about to leave the station they’re suddenly about $600,000,000,000 short of what they had hoped by their own estimates. And just try to remember the last time that the government’s own estimates didn’t end up at half or less off actual cost. This thing could easily cost double that. You think health care's expensive now, just wait til it's free! It’s appears to be an article of faith with the left that there’s always unlimited money out there. ‘It’s such a rich country…this. In such a rich country … that.'

But maybe it just can’t be done. Maybe it's impossible to provide unlimited, 21st century universal health care to all Americans. Maybe the doctors will choose not to treat the patients in the new public system because the remuneration is too low. Maybe the government’s driving down costs with ultimately a one payer solution will drive all the talent out of the sector, causing doctor shortages making your low cost health care not even worth the lower price you pay for it. Maybe government plans to pay for a secure retirement, quality health care, universal pre-school through college education and a greener environment for every person in the country will bankrupt us. Maybe private investment in new medicines and technologies will plummet when the government’s controlling prices and life expectancy will go down instead of up. Maybe the plan will result in rationing and more suffering as millions wait to be treated. Maybe Kennedy was baying at the moon when he said, "Many look at the world and say why, but I look at the world and say why not".

But I say, why are we all required to take part in this dreamy, idealistic and utopian faith by the would be reformers of this world? This latest but always predictable, historical incarnation of the ‘vanguard of the proletariat’? Why can’t we just opt out of this mega-scheme? Why can’t we just pick up our chips, cash in and go home? But no, President Obama and his ilk insist that everyone has to play but not everyone has to pay. Yep. Kennedy said ‘why not’. Clinton was the ‘man from hope’, Obama dares us to have the ‘courage to change’. Excuse me but I thought we had the freedom to worship in the church of our choice in this county? The tithing to bring heaven to earth in this latest mandate from the Church of Big Government is just too damn high for this infidel and, more than likely, for the rest of you as well.

M.D.T.