Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi actually said this recently, in praise of ObamaCare: ‘You want to be a photographer or a writer or a musician, whatever — an artist, you want to be self-employed, if you want to start a business, you want to change jobs, you no longer are prohibited from doing that because you can’t have access to health care, especially because you do not want to put your family at risk,’ she said.
‘This is what our founders had in mind — ever expanding opportunity for people.’
Not quite, Nancy.
The founders had in mind something very different. The founders had in mind a free people with individual rights protected by a Constitution.
ObamaCare might give some people the ability to become photographers or musicians because they won’t have to worry about health insurance. ObamaCare might even let some people stay at home and do nothing all day, if that’s what they choose. But the only thing making all this possible — the free health care part, at least — are the efforts and sacrifices of others. You know’the ones being forced to foot the bill, by the government.
The founders envisioned a society of equal rights for everyone. Everyone was to be equal under the law, and everyone was to be equally free to pursue happiness, so long as the pursuit of happiness did not mean imposing force on others. ObamaCare does not represent that. ObamaCare gives some people heightened comfort and flexibility at the expense of others. It utilizes government force to do so.
Why, Nancy, should someone working 40 or 80 hours a week pay for the health insurance of someone who wants to be a self-employed photographer, a musician, or a stay-at-home parent? Where in the Constitution, or in the Declaration of Independence, do you see those sorts of ‘rights’? Where is it even implied, in the Constitution, that ‘I have a right to pursue the kind of career I want, even if others must be forced to help me’?
‘Ever-expanding’ opportunity for people? Are you serious? ObamaCare is fining and taxing employers who don’t meet new government requirements for insuring people. This will force companies to not hire when they otherwise would hire. Jobs that once existed, or would otherwise have existed without the imposition of ObamaCare, will disappear. What about the people who would have held those jobs? Are their needs and rights to be sacrificed to those who would prefer to pursue a career in art or music, perhaps making no money at all in the process?
What about the impact on companies who sell products and services? ObamaCare will add significantly to their costs, meaning that their prices will go up. Fuel, oil, transportation, groceries, computers, furniture, houses ‘ this means everything. Everyone who sells these products or services will now have to charge more for them, since ObamaCare represents perhaps the biggest unfunded government mandate in American history.
What about the people who will have to pay more for these products and services, thanks to ObamaCare? What about the ones on a tight budget, and who will have to go without? If Nancy and her fellow liberal socialists are to be so self-congratulatory about all they have done to help people on tight budgets, what about the contribution they have made to rising prices? The media and academia will never even bring it up.
And what about the budget deficit and national debt, growing exponentially by the minute? ObamaCare is projected to add trillions to the debt and deficit, trillions beyond what Medicare and Social Security were already going to add. Doesn’t this matter at all? Or are we going to simply keep raising the national debt limit into some hypothetical infinity, never worrying about it since it’s all government funny money anyway? Do you have to be a Harvard economist to see that this cannot end well?
The issue here isn’t the expansion of opportunity for people. The question is: WHICH people? Clearly, it’s the people whose opportunities are to be expanded at the expense of those whose opportunities are to be restrained or extinguished.
This isn’t what the founders of the United States had in mind.
Incidentally, the people who can now become photographers, musicians and artists, or who can now stay at home and drink iced tea or snort cocaine all day, are not necessarily beneficiaries, either. Sure, they’re going to get free health care paid for by somebody else. But they’re also going to face rising prices at the gas station, the grocery store, and everywhere else. They’re going to face rising prices at companies who manufacture cameras or artist/musician supplies. It’s going to be harder to purchase a computer, a piano or a guitar — unless Nancy and her socialist liberal friends who run things decide to finance those too. Who knows, maybe they will. But we’re still back to the issue of some people’s rights being sacrificed for the sake of others’ comfort.
In Obama’s and Pelosi’s America, you’re (superficially) lucky if you’re one of the people they want to help. But if you’re one of the people to be paying the price for the mandates, you’re not quite so lucky. Many who will vote to reelect Obama and perhaps return Congress to the Pelosi Democrats are among those who will suffer.
Nancy, stop quoting Jefferson, Madison and Thomas Paine in support of your redistributive schemes. We know who your heroes are, and we know that you know it isn’t any of them. Skip the pretense and start quoting Karl Marx. That’s what ObamaCare is all about.