There is one fact about the health care “reform” legislation being debated in Washington, DC, that is unavoidable. The fact that it is coercive.
Governments coerce. It would be great if governmental force were used only to combat criminals, not also to tell us how to live our lives. But, alas, this is not the case.
If the proposed health care legislation is passed, it will result in new orders from the federal government that everyone must obey. Everyone: Doctors; employers; patients; taxpayers. One mandate would force you to sign up for health insurance if you currently lack it. Refuse, and you’ll pay a penalty. Unless you qualify for a “hardship exemption.”
Do we all know what this means? A Washington Post report claims that the notion of penalizing Americans who decline to sign up for health insurance “has its roots in the conservative philosophy of self-reliance.” Because, presumably, the best way to encourage self-reliance is to point a gun at people and tell them what to do “for their own good.”
This is worse than messy thinking. It is the opposite of the truth. Self-reliance is a matter of making choices. It implies the freedom to make choices. Self-reliance has nothing to do with Big Brother ordering you about as if your own thinking, values, and circumstances were irrelevant. And self-reliance has nothing to do with the current health care debate in Washington.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
6 replies on “Slavery Is Not Freedom”
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The link to the Washington Post article does not reveal the report. It’s a dead link at the Post.
I’d like to read the report if it’s available.
Jugears wants all seniors to be exempted from ANY medical treatment whatsoever. This means essentially euthanasia. All of us geezers(myself included and eventually all citizens will not get treatment) Of course, the princes of the realm (politicians) will have a somewhat different plan-they will pay somethiing like a buck for each treatment and will never be deied. I assume this applies to spouses and children forever, also.
I sincerely hope that all those “reporters” who pushed this Chicago thief get deathly ill shortly after this idiotic Demotrash bill is passed and signed-let’s see how they bow and scrape before His Royal Majesty then.
The problem, here, is not one of going from a free system to a coerced one; it’s only a matter of changing one coerced system for another.
No economist who knows anything would ever propose a market in which the person receiving a service is not the one paying for it, one in which the service is received by one party, paid for by a second party, arranged by a third party, and delivered by a fourth. This separation of customer and vendor destroys the business relationship and fosters gross inefficiencies and bill-padding. On top of all that, the medical business is very cartelized. It’s no wonder that what we have now is a mess, and it will be no wonder that whatever replaces it will likewise be a mess, probably a worse one.
Joe — We’ll correct the link in the text ASAP, but here it is:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/21/AR2009072103410.html
Hank — The threat of euthanasia (by omission rather than commission) is very real.
Kenneth — You are correct, of course.
Paranoid old geezers,
The system our government is attempting to enact is one in which all citizens of the United States will receive that first inalienable right we hold so dear. LIFE
The current free economic healthcare system has unfortunately allowed the cost of healthcare to become so astronomic that a large population of our nation are simply unable to afford treatment of any kind.
And so you must agree, the right to LIFE, has suddenly faded from their grasp.
Think of all those people thousands of dollars in debt because their young son or daughter fell over and broke his or her arm. Or a young woman on a bicycle who was hit by a car and now owes a city hospital thousands because they bandaged up her head. These insurmountable debts are being taken up by the United States tax payer anyways, while these young or old people, suffering the calamities of life, are forced to go to court, or file bankruptcy. These are not abstract examples, as I personally know people who have faced these exact obstacles, But episodes like these are happening everyday across the country, and have been for a very long time.
The cost of health care in this country has gone way out of realistic proportions, and everyone involved except the consumer is pushing to go even further into absurdity.
What solution would you suggest? To allow the market to fix itself? Or perhaps to simply allow the millions of people in this country without health insurance to fight it out for themselves.
Freedom is the ability to make the choice for yourself as an individual. But freedom is also the ability to choose to sacrifice for the good of all, so that the all may enjoy those most important, and INALIENABLE rights.
Ask yourself if you have the courage and conviction to believe in what’s right for your country, and your fellow citizens who inhabit it with you, your countrymen.
As far as being forced to sign up for healthcare, for starters, I don’t believe a single one of you does not have healthcare of some sort. Number two, wouldn’t you agree, that anyone who does not have healthcare, is him or herself, a threat to the general health of others, and therefore threatening the LIFE rights of others? i.e. Sick Kids at school, Infectious/STD carriers who are ignorant of the fact. It would be better if those people had healthcare, whether they want it or not.