Tonight the supposed "pro-life" Democrats (what an oxymoron) caved and decided to vote for Obamacare. Previously they'd been the only thing standing in Pelosi & Obama's way to passing their health care boondoggle, proving that even the moderate Democrats are out-to-lunch.
Bart Stupak, leader of the pro-life Dem's, claims he got what he wanted: assurance from the White House that abortions would somehow not get funded through this national health care system. He is going to get this via an executive order signed by Obama stating so. How that is satisfying to Stupak is beyond me. An executive order can be overturned by any president, at any time. Or just not even written by Obama. Or written in such a way that it doesn't give pro-lifers what they want.
Or it could be that Stupak's just an idiot. That seems unlikely, but what kind of person sells out on such a core moral issue when offered so very little? And then Stupak makes it worse (for his reelection campaign) by getting behind the bill and promoting it, claiming Democrats are the good guys, here, when Republicans tried to make motions to kill the bill earlier tonight:
"The motion is really a last-ditch effort of 98 years of denying Americans health care. It is the Democrats who have stood up for the principal of no public funding of abortions. It is Democrats through the president's executive order that ensure the sanctity of life is protected."Does any serious adult believe that Democrats, not Republicans, are the ones who have been protecting life all these years? Fighting abortion? It's the godless liberals, supporters of the Democrat party, that got abortion to be enshrined into law through the court system, and who continue to argue for it today. Religious conservatives are the ones fighting abortion. The GOP is the party that has anti-abortion language written into its platform. The Democrats are the ones who removed it from theirs.
And this idea that Congress has been "denying Americans health care" for 98 years??? Talk about a drama queen. Where is it, exactly, Mr. Stupak, you moron, where it says Congress has the AUTHORITY, much less the mandate, to provide health care for its citizens?? Where is it, exactly, Ms. Pelosi, you communist, in the constitution where it says health care is a RIGHT??
Pelosi and Obama want one thing: Big Government. They want to "re-make" this country into a socialist utopia. They can deny it all they want, but their actions give them away, even if they themselves are too cowardly to stand up for what they really believe. Taking over the health care system is a big step in that direction. And they just convinced the majority of their party to commit political suicide in order to get it.
Statists In Our Midst
The Nanny State just got a lot larger. Businesses, the life force of our economy, will be required to provide health insurance to their employees. Something that businesses began to offer employees as a benefit, as a way to attract good employees, will now be mandated by law: If you run a business, you have to provide health insurance for your employees, or pay a fine. Furthermore, if you're an insurance company, you won't be allowed to exclude pre-existing conditions anymore (which effectively changes the nature of the product you offer, making it unlike actual insurance).
Why? Because when people started depending on their workplace to provide their health insurance, they found they had problems when they wanted to switch jobs, because anything they'd been being treated for would now be a "pre-existing condition" and thus not qualified to be insured. This is Insurance 101. It's not unfair, and it makes perfect sense from the insurance company's perspective.
But the Statist Democrats saw an opportunity to grab an enormous chunk of power, to the tune of 1/6 of the entire economy, and couldn't pass it up. In ostensibly trying to help people grapple with this problem, rather than seek out conservative, market-based solutions like removing health insurance from workplaces, or allowing private individuals to purchase their own health insurance at the same rate and tax-deductibility as companies do, the statists instead decided to take workplace-provided health insurance a step FURTHER (making an existing bad situation even worse) by mandating that employers provide health insurance, then turning around and mandating that insurers ignore pre-existing conditions. So in one fell swoop, Congress has injected itself into the operations of almost all private businesses in the country, and into all health insurers in the country.
But this is just one tiny piece of what grew into a 2700+ page bill. As bad as what I just described is, it's the tip of the iceberg for this legislation. The government's own Medicare program (a ponzi scheme within 10 years of going bankrupt) and Medicaid (a taxpayer-funded health provider program for the poor that is in the red) programs will also be affected by this, as millions more people are added to Medicaid and billions of dollars are cut out of Medicare to try to pay for the new health care system. Clearly, taxes will have to be raised across-the-board, and even that won't cover the additional expenses. And this is all happening at a time when we still have double-digit unemployment and an unstable economy trying to recover from a nasty recession.
Stupid or Smart?
Democrats, in their short-sighted unwise attempts to "reform" a health care system that is not fundamentally broken and actually is the envy of the world, are going to wreck that system and risk bringing down the entire American economy in the process. By not intelligently analyzing the health care system to determine what its core problems are, Democrats are instituting new rules that do not address the real issues, and add on more burdens instead. Are they just stupid, and really believe they're helping people? Or are they smart, and targeting for takeover a sixth of the economy that will open the door for more takeovers? It's one or the other, take your pick.
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