Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Get Ready for the Coming Post-ObamaCare Battle

A couple of months ago, in my TOS post The Left's False Alternative on Health Care, I quoted Ray Stever from his article promoting H.R. 676--"Medicare for All"--as a replacement for ObamaCare:


[W]e must build a nationwide movement to expand and improve Medicare to cover everything for everyone. We need to pass HR 676, the U.S. National Health Care Act. Under HR 676, all Americans would be enrolled in Medicare, which would cover all necessary medical care. That means doctors' bills, hospital bills, prescription drugs, mental and dental, eyeglasses, hearing aids, home health care assistants, nursing home care. The whole enchilada.


As I've noted in the related links provided in this post, ObamaCare is only a step in the continuous Democrat drive for socialized medicine. The next threat is already gathering. Others understand this, too.


In a recent article in Forbes, titled The Democrats' Fallback Plan For When ObamaCare Inevitable Fails--which I learned about via FIRM--Dr. Scott W. Atlas also raised the specter of single-payer healthcare emerging as the next battleground in American healthcare.


[L]ooming over health care but ignored by those whose arguments focus only on ObamaCare is the next step in President Obama’s plan for transforming America. The unspoken reality is that President Obama and the Democrats’ fallback plan for ObamaCare’s failure is fully nationalized, single payer health care.

As the evidence rolls in after ObamaCare takes hold, proving its failure to reduce health care expenditures, combined with the predictable decrease in access to care for those with government insurance and the non-viability of private insurance, Americans will understandably voice an increasing dislike of the reformed system. So, specifically, what might we expect during the next phase of this transformative presidency, either from this administration or more likely the next Democrat to profess expertise about health care reform?
First and foremost, watch out for the reemergence of a “public option” likely marketed by Democrats as “Medicare for all”, as Democrats revive their already stated original goal of forging a single payer, wholly government-controlled system.
Congressional Democrats unmistakably anticipate the failure of ObamaCare.... John Conyers (D-Mich.) was quite direct when he unabashedly stated the Democrats’ end-game along with their standard canard: “Improved and Expanded Medicare for All is inevitable in America– it is just a matter of when it will happen.

As the inevitable catastrophes wrought by ObamaCare become clear, the Left will be ready with a quasi-plausible pitch. They will point to “greedy” insurance companies and the “inefficient”  profit system as the culprits, and trot out H.R. 676 or some single-payer equivalent as the solution. 


But Americans must remember that government funding is tyranny, because whomever pays sets the terms. When the government pays for your healthcare, they will have complete power of you and your doctor. And the control will extend beyond healthcare to myriad areas of your life, because so many things you do affects your health, which will thus affect the cost to "society"--i.e., to government--of providing you you're healthcare. This is what gives rise to such absurdities as NYC Mayor Bloomberg dictating what size drinks you can buy or, as Dr. Atlas notes and as I previously discussed, the scary prospect of the criminalization of medical practice unacceptable to the government. As Atlas concludes:


When Congress passed the health legislation plan that the President sought, they radically changed health care in the United States, and audaciously imposed a strong-armed federal government onto perhaps the most personal of all segments of American life.... Even worse to contemplate, though, is that President Obama and the Democrats may actually have received a willing acceptance of the infantilization of the American people by their government, from voters who followed the siren call of bigger government and embraced a new culture of increasing dependence, regardless of the consequences.


In the Left’s final push for its long-held single-payer dream, will the Right be ready to expose the real villains for the steady, decades-long deterioration of American Healthcare; Medicare and Medicaid, SCHIP, EMTALA, the FDA, insurance mandates, and the “whole enchilada” of government intervention?

This time, America will be presented with undiluted, uncamouflaged socialized medicine. Responding with proposals to tinker with the status quo, or return to the pre-ObamaCare mixed system, won’t do. This time, the Right must be ready with a clear alternative vision; a fully free market in healthcare.

The coming battle demands nothing less.


Related Reading:

The Coming Collision Between the Doctors and the State

Moral Health Care vs. Universal Health Care, by Lin Zinser and Paul Hsieh


American Healthcare's Great and Powerful Oz


The Left's False Alternative on Health Care


H.R. 676--The Battle is Joined


The Battle of the Narrative: How Ordinary Americans Can Fight ObamaCare, by Paul Hsieh

2 comments:

Steve D said...

ObamaCare was designed to fail. That's a feature, not a bug.

principled perspectives said...

I agree.