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April 26, 2009
The Late Great State of [Free] America
It may be just a matter of weeks and Americans will wake up to find over two hundred years of liberty gone.
In the next week or so, Democrats will make sweeping changes to American health care using “budget reconciliation,” an arcane process that allows Congress to minimize debate, prevent amendments, and circumvent filibusters in the Senate, a top Republican budgeteer predicts. [...]It must be about the power, because it has little to do with actually improving healthcare. The evidence against nationalized medicine is enormous and on-going. CanadaIn this case, the Obama administration plans to abuse a process that was designed to save money, not create expansive and expensive new policies. The idea is to implement two controversial policies at the once — carbon caps, which will raise government revenues, and nationalized health care, which costs money. Ideally, the one policy allows the other one to pass. If Congress can estimate for itself $1.5 trillion dollars in future revenues from selling mandatory carbon credits, it can then pass legislation under reconciliation to spend all but $1 billion of that money on an entirely new health-care system.
The final result: $1 billion “saved,” thus complying with the budget reconciliation instructions. A billion-dollar tail wags a $1.5 trillion dog. [...]
“We've seen mission creep with reconciliation under both Republicans and Democrats — there's no question about that,” said [Rep. Paul Ryan (R, Wisc.)]. “But this takes mission creep to a whole new level. Now they're talking about the possible nationalization of 17 percent of our economy in health care, 8 percent of the economy in energy, and the largest tax increase in history — all through a process which will have between 35 and 105 total hours of debate between the House and the Senate . . . That's an enormous power grab.”
to contain rising costs, government-run health-care systems invariably restrict the health-care supply. Thus, at a time when Canada’s population was aging and needed more care, not less, cost-crunching bureaucrats had reduced the size of medical school classes, shuttered hospitals, and capped physician fees, resulting in hundreds of thousands of patients waiting for needed treatment—patients who suffered and, in some cases, died from the delays. [...]The latest from Britain: a study in mindless bureaucracyNor were the problems I identified unique to Canada—they characterized all government-run health-care systems. Consider the recent British controversy over a cancer patient who tried to get an appointment with a specialist, only to have it canceled—48 times. More than 1 million Britons must wait for some type of care, with 200,000 in line for longer than six months. A while back, I toured a public hospital in Washington, D.C., with Tim Evans, a senior fellow at the Centre for the New Europe. The hospital was dark and dingy, but Evans observed that it was cleaner than anything in his native England. In France, the supply of doctors is so limited that during an August 2003 heat wave—when many doctors were on vacation and hospitals were stretched beyond capacity—15,000 elderly citizens died. Across Europe, state-of-the-art drugs aren’t available. And so on.
Sarah Luisis, 27, who is five months pregnant, has been told she needs to provide more proof that she has a baby on the way.A study in totalitarianismThat is despite the fact that she has a big bump, a doctor's certificate, antenatal notes and ultrasound pictures of her unborn child.
Miss Luisis, of Hornchurch, Essex, is desperate to see a dentist after enduring weeks of agony with bleeding gums.
'I was so numb I couldn't even cry': Daughter blasts 'Gestapo' social services as they bundle mother, 86, out of family home.Will Americans miss their freedom? Will they even notice its passing or has the lurch into Euro-nihilism already gone too far?
That mentality goes something like this: Human beings are a collection of chemicals that activate and, after a period of time, deactivate. The purpose of life is to while away the intervening time as pleasantly as possible. [...]Something worth dying for? How old-fashioned! How reactionary! How bitter-clingy and ...The same self-absorption in whiling away life as pleasantly as possible explains why Europe has become a continent that no longer celebrates greatness. When life is a matter of whiling away the time, the concept of greatness is irritating and threatening. What explains Europe’s military impotence? I am surely simplifying, but this has to be part of it: If the purpose of life is to while away the time as pleasantly as possible, what can be worth dying for?
How American.
Posted by Darleen at April 26, 2009 06:47 PM
Comments
Well, those comments make at least as much sense as Josh and timb usually do.
Posted by: Chris at April 28, 2009 07:35 PM
What a loon. Budget reconciliation is used to pass legislation all the time. The idea that allowing the Senate to pass legislation with a majority instead of a supermajority is somehow tyrannical is batshit nutso, even by your standards.
And, of course, the US doesn't have the best health care system in the world. Last among developed countries, actually.
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/337/jul21_1/a889
I don't see you complaining about the government paying for your health insurance.
Posted by: Josh at April 28, 2009 09:50 PM
[comment deleted]
Posted by: Rightwingsnarkle at April 30, 2009 11:23 PM
Damn. It's a regular party over here. Viagra or cialis - which is the stronger? Extenz or Enzyte - which is the longer? So many questions so little time...
Posted by: centristderangementsyndrome at May 4, 2009 03:49 PM