House Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) brags that the Republican Party will be taking steps to “… be part of the overall effort to protect the American people from the harmful effects of Obamacare by ultimately repealing and replacing the law with patient-focused reforms that expand access, ensure quality care and help control costs.”
What’s he saying, exactly?
I get that he’s against Obamacare. But why?
I’m against Obamacare because the government has no right to be involved in health care at all. I maintain that the medical market should be an entirely private sector, and that all health care should involve economic transactions between uncoerced physicians, patients and any private third party payers they voluntarily include in these transactions.
I’m all for charity too, just so it’s not ordered at the point of a government gun (not to mention ruined by the spectacle of politics.)
When Rep. Cantor says he wants to “increase access” what does he mean, exactly? It sounds like he wants to guarantee a right to health care for all Americans—to expand that so-called right, if anything. But this is the same thing Democrats want, and that Obamacare attempts to deliver on.
No “right” to health care can be guaranteed without coercing someone to do something against their will. The moment we go down this road, we’re no longer a free country.
I recognize that Medicare and Medicaid, along with other government interventions, took us out of a free marketplace a long time ago. But why doesn’t the opposition party—the Republicans—argue for an alternative to the status quo? Why argue for increasing the alleged “right” to health care (i.e., access) rather than taking the chains off the hands of doctors and patients?
There are basically two roads for health care reform. One is complete nationalization, which Obamacare attempts to accomplish. The opposite road is complete privatization. Republicans like Rep. Cantor don’t even seem to know what that is.
Why not favor reforms to privatize the marketplace rather than simply socialize medicine by some different plan, by some different (never explicitly named) method?
We wonder why Republicans keep losing. Why should they win? They’re not proposing anything different. They’re straddling the fence. They try to sound like they favor both the marketplace and Obama’s “utopia” of freebies for everyone, all at the same time. Cantor’s vague, wobbly remarks prove my point.
My theory? Republicans (at least the establishment ones) are cowards. They stand for nothing. That’s the tragedy of our situation. We have a bunch of intellectual and moral “weenies” as the only opposition to the uncompromisingly wrong.
The real issue here is whether the individual belongs to him- or herself, or to the state. Democrats take it for granted that the individual belongs to the state. It’s the state’s responsibility, therefore, to see to it that everybody has what he or she wants or needs. If you’re able and willing to produce that, then good for you—but you will be forced to share. If for whatever reasons you don’t produce anything for yourself—well, you will be provided for by others, regardless of the circumstances and simply because the government says so.
None of this is freedom. It’s enslavement. The moment you produce or create anything of value, or acquire any worthwhile skill, then those efforts become the product of the government, to distribute (or let you keep it) as it alone sees fit.
This is so unjust and so impractical a method of fostering justice, freedom, excellence, or anything you would imagine required for a delicate, important and highly technical field such as medicine, that it’s incredible to think that the only opposition we hear from Obama’s opponents are: “Greater access for all.”
Obama has passed a law that states everyone will have health care, regardless of how it happens, and those who are able to provide will be forced to provide it. Obama has guaranteed access at the expense of … well, everything: freedom in medicine, the autonomy and rights of health providers and the dignity and privacy of patients.
And all Republican leaders have to say in protest is, “This is no good. Let’s have more access for everyone!”
Obama keeps winning because he has no opposition. When his alleged opposition argues for “greater access,” they’re demanding more of the same.
Obama and his Democrats will keep winning: Unless or until the opposition party develops the spine to propose a total course reversal.
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