Sick Socialism
We should have “an honest debate” on health care, said Barack Obama in his Aug. 22 radio address, “not one dominated by willful misrepresentations and outright distortions.”
Among the “phony claims” made against the House bill, says the president, are that it provides funding for abortions, guarantees coverage for illegal aliens, contains “death panels” and represents a federal takeover of the health care system.
Is Obama right? Are critics misleading and frightening folks with falsehoods about Obamacare?
Well, let us inspect each of those “phony claims.”
Does the House bill fund abortions? No.
However, while the House Energy and Commerce Committee at first voted to exclude abortions from “essential” services, to the howls of NOW, Chairman Henry Waxman conducted a second vote, to drop the anti-abortion amendment. That vote carried.
In short, funding for abortions remains an open question.
And whether Obama agrees to drop it to assure passage, he supports the Freedom of Choice Act that would, opponents insist, overturn every state and federal restriction, including the Hyde Amendment, which forbids federal funding. Obama has already used his authority to lift the Reagan administration prohibition against using foreign aid funds to procure abortions abroad.
Obama is a pro-abortion absolutist. And if abortion-funding is not in the final health care bill, does anyone doubt that Democrats will move swiftly to incorporate it in future legislation?
As for illegal aliens, Obama is right again. They are not covered in any of the five bills. All their children are automatic citizens and are covered, however. And no illegal alien who comes to an emergency room can be denied care. And there is no eligibility verification screening provided for in any of the bills to sort out and exclude illegal aliens.
Obama said in Mexico City he is determined to put our 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens on a “path to citizenship.” That would make them legal immigrants. And legal immigrants are covered.
Moreover, a high percentage of all immigrants, legal and illegal, are poor, uneducated, unskilled and unable to find the kind of jobs that carry health insurance. We have some 40 million immigrants today, with another 100 million expected by 2050.
Any national health insurance system put in place today is going to be swamped if we do not close the borders and halt immigration.
Obama and the Democrats, who are almost all pro-abortion and pro-amnesty, are assuring us their health care bill will not advance these goals to which they are committed by ideology. This is disingenuous at best.
What about the “death panels.” No, they are not in the bill. Nor is there any doctor’s right to perform euthanasia or mercy-killing.
Obama’s resolve to cut health care costs, at the same time he repeatedly reminds us that half of all such costs are incurred in the last six months of life, however, points straight to rationed care for the elderly ill, where drugs, procedures and operations necessary to life are going to be curtailed or cut off. There is no other way to get there.
And if government bureaucrats are making those decisions, can they not fairly be called death panels, especially if the folks for whom they are deciding are suffering from such diseases as senility and Alzheimer’s?
How do you curtail or cut care for the elderly sick and terminally ill without advancing the date of their deaths? Sarah Palin may have been factually incorrect, but her instincts about what is coming were dead-on.
What of Obama’s dismissal as “phony” the claim that the “public option” for health insurance must lead to a government takeover?
But did not Barney Frank say the government option is the best way to a single-payer system — that is, a government monopoly? Barack says he wants competition. But in the past, he, too, has spoken of favoring a single-payer system and he, too, has said a public option is the first step on a 10- or 20-year march to single-payer.
Because Obama has ceased talking of a single-payer system and it is not in the bill does not mean that a public option will not put us on the road to government control.
Indeed, does anyone believe Barack has any objections to government-run universal health care? Does anyone think that a government-run insurance program, with access to tax revenues and the ability to undercut all competition, will not crowd out private insurance and take us to where Barney and Barack want to go?
Both Barney and Barack are pro-abortion and pro-amnesty. Both have spoken favorably of a single-payer system where Uncle Sam shoulders aside the insurance companies that Nancy Pelosi calls the “villains” in the health care system.
As a Fabian socialist, however, Obama will accept a small victory, if the road leads toward ultimate triumph and the alternative is a big defeat.
Thus, what the center-right needs to do is administer to this Fabian socialist a decisive defeat in a big battle — like this one we are in.
Patrick Buchanan is the author of the new book Churchill, Hitler, and ‘The Unnecessary War,’ now available in paperback.
COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS.COM
Excellent post, sir, especially as regards the “public option” leading, ultimately, to the destruction of private industry in American health care.
I mean, why would anybody want to pay for something they can get from the government, free of charge?
I question Buchanan’s assertion that the US will have 140 million illegal immigrants by 2050. First off, we ought to remember that the last big illegal immigration boom happened because the economy boomed and the birth rate hadn’t. That influx has already subsided, and it’s disingenuous to extrapolate an upward trend based on it.
I cosign heartily to the rest. People who honestly think that the lack of abortion funding language in the bill means that abortions won’t be funded is naively (or duplicitously) assuming that law dictates policy. It doesn’t. The executive branch picks up as much slack as they want to unless they’re expressly forbidden by language inserted in the bill from doing so. As such, the refusal to insert such forbidding language is the only indication we need.
In America, conservatives and the pseudo-conservatives do always whine about illegal immigrants.
But, when Ronald Reagan and Bushes were presidents, they did never try to stop both illegal and legal immigration into this country.
Therefore, what’s the point of repeatedly writing about current President Baraq Hussein, Jr.’s deep sympathy for illegal or legal immigrants?
American government can effectively close its borders with executive orders from the president. But, it does not do so.
American government can ask legally admitted foreigners to leave America upon completion of their purpose to be here in this country. But, it does not do so.
Rather, offers over 100,000 lottery visas every year to foreigners from all over the world to come and settle in America.
If Republican presidents fail to stop illegal immigration, what’s the point there to think that a democratic president who has come to power with 95% votes of the minority would prefer to do so?
American conservatives or the pseudo-conservatives should better be prepared to welcome the Hispanic majority in America within the next 30 years.
Why, indeed, Adam?
Seems to be more efficient to do it that way, too, rather than letting people die to avoid taking on “medical losses”.
What disgusts me about these “progressives” is that they don’t even bother to look into why healthcare(likewise for health insurance) costs are becoming so high.
Socialism is definitely on the march with this administration. But it’s worth remembering that Bush helped advance creeping socialism with many of his own policies, including his expansion of Medicare with the prescription drug package.
Obama’s distinction is in the audacity with which he pursues socialistic policies. But socialism is just as real a threat (if more muted) under GOP rule. There was opportunity under Bush (with 6 years of a GOP majority) to move the country away from big government. But it was not to be. Instead, he helped grease the skids for what’s coming.
The continuity between Bush and Obama is astounding.
not to mention the continuity between them and bush/clinton…
I guess many conservatives would like to see an provision in the health care bill that forces emergency rooms to check birth certificates before providing care.
While a large number of immegrants are unskilled, many work in the construction and food industries without health insurance or time off for illness. With new strains of influenza each year, conservatives should find great comfort in dining out knowing their food is probably handled by an ill food worker
Finally, the argument that these fake concerns are real because of the true agenda of progressives is without merit. Funding abortion is not there period. Conservatives could have codified the prohibition when they had the majority. Why didn’t they. There are many ways to control costs especially for seniors: let Medicare negotiate prices, end of life planning as promoted by for profit insurance, hospice care rather than hospital rooms, etc.
To Mike. Progressives do look at why health care costs continue to increase. Doctors have to have at least one full time person completing insurance papers. Uninsured use expensive emergency room care. Patent drugs are expensive and the largest insurer cannot negotiate prices or import cheaper drugs. Large drug companies can renew their patents. And of course the conservatives rallying point; malpractice insurance.
Agree with the article, completely, except for “Any national health insurance system put in place today is going to be swamped if we do not close the borders and halt immigration.”
We do not need a national health insurance system, but we need free markets in health care. We should be working for less insurance, more out of pocket payments for health services.
It is the very third world that Pat seems to fear leaking over the border that has models for pay as you go health care. Look at India, Mexico, Brazil, etc. More doctors, more drugs, less red tape, less insurance, more competition, lower costs.
The wretched of the earth could teach us a thing or two about health care, if we only look at them.
Two ways to help healthcare have not been tried (and probably never will be) if the states would pass tort reform (as done in Texas) and allow interstate competition by insurance carriers….Texas has a surplus of
doctors.
So, to summarize, the main conservative claims about Obamacare are false, but the relevant proposed bills fail to prevent those claims from being true someday. Therefore the false claims are perhaps not true but surely at least fair.
Here’s what the magazine should say, but hasn’t got the guts to: Many of our colleagues are lying about Obamacare, and lying is no way to build a movement. Period, full stop.
Some good points, but any good reader can tell you confuse the reader by grouping multiple (and disparate) arguments together. For instance, your argument about illegal immigrants bunches identification issues, ER visits, and children of illegals into a single argument. Those are three very complicated and virtually unrelated topics. As a result of such a partisan move, your real concerns are just too easy to dismiss. This is why we can’t dialog in this country.
Better writing would be objective fact checking. That might actually make some non-Republicans like me take you seriously, Mr. Buchanan.