Supporters of Obamacare speak as if refusing to fund or implement it will create a Constitutional crisis.
Actually, it’s Obamacare and other laws like it that create the growing crisis with our government.
Obamacare is a law that attempts to manufacture a private marketplace by government fiat—and then force citizens to take part in it.
It’s also a law that prevents health insurance companies from imposing requirements on policyholders, such as preexisting conditions. “What can be wrong with that?” most people ask. The problem is, this kind of law prevents insurance companies from being insurance companies. Insurance companies don’t impose restrictions like that simply to be mean. They do it to keep the policies solvent, so that the insurance companies may stay in business and continue to pay claims to paying policyholders.
Obamacare proceeds as if all health insurance and medical services are property of the government. It’s not a law that actually passes socialized medicine. Instead, it proceeds as if socialized medicine already exists, and then proceeds to treat doctors, patients and insurance companies as if they’re completely under the control of the government with respect to medical care.
It actually would have made more logical sense for Obama and Congress to simply nationalize medical care outright. That way, we could be done with insurance companies and fee-for-service doctors. People would simply go to the doctor’s office of their choosing, and demand treatment as a right. Government would reimburse doctors on its own terms, but doctors would be obliged to provide that right.
Therein lies the great deception of Obamacare. It claims to leave everything as it is, while simply providing coverage to those who don’t have it. But the law, in order to function as passed, must proceed as if everything involved with medical care belongs to the government. It’s a dishonest law, and counts on widespread ignorance and indifference among the population.
Right now most people are confused and indifferent about the law. They’re taking a ‘wait and see’ attitude, according to most polls and based on nearly everything I hear nearly everyone say. On the surface, this seems reasonable. But the damage is already done, unless Obamacare is reversed as well as all laws which put government in charge of medical care. American medicine needs a restoration of a free market, and nobody is proposing legislative steps to make this happen. Defunding Obamacare is a principled step in that direction, although only a preliminary step.
Defunding Obamacare is a not a crisis for the Constitution. The Constitution is imperiled by laws like Obamacare. Nationalizing entire industries and enterprises is not the purpose of the Constitution.
Defunding Obamacare is a crisis for politicians and people whose interests lie in government power. That’s why they’re shrieking and screaming about it. Notice that it’s not only Obama Democrats doing the screaming, but also career politician Republicans who want the law funded. They understand that from where they sit, government power as a principle trumps the rights of individuals they used to champion when initially opposing Obamacare.
Laws like Obamacare, and Big Government in general, win by default when the majority of people are passive. The majority of people I encounter willfully avoid having political opinions. They say, ‘I hate politics and I hate everything politicians in both parties are doing.’
That may be a valid opinion. But if you stop right there, then you’re leaving it to the political and government class to do what they’re doing. And that’s exactly how Obamacare got passed, and why it’s going to stay there.
It’s not enough to hate politicians and politics. You have to deeply want ownership over your own life, destiny and property. You must be willing to fight for what’s yours against these twits and hacks we have elected to rule us (and then criticize for doing so).
It’s hard to imagine an area more relevant or important to all of our lives than medical care.
Medical care does not belong to the government. It belongs to the health care professionals who create it, and the patients who purchase it—and who have a right to purchase it on a free market, just as they purchase other products and services.
Obamacare takes us as far from a free market in medicine as anything in America has to date. As a matter of principle and ideology, Obamacare is a fitting tribute to a nation whose people have become politically passive and a government who stands ready to take over everything it can.
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