Friday, August 28, 2009

THE SINISTER TRUTH

The current fervent debate over health care reform and how to cover some millions of presently uninsured, unveils a sinister truth.

From the perspectives of free enterprise and individual responsibility, both of which I ardently support, the health care industry ought be left alone. There is no standard of life to be set, which if the free enterprise system is not reaching, demands government intervention. The fact that government involvement never ever ever attains perfection, is not the point. Freedom is the only standard for human life because the nature of our species, with each individual's power to contemplate and choose, requires freedom. Any limitation in the respecting of the freedom of each of us, any shackling of the mind's power to choose, attacks the very essence of our species. It is akin to cutting off the wings of a bird.

But that is not the sinister truth I refer to. Even granting, for the moment, the right of the government, and the advisability of it being the agency, to solve the "problem" of uninsureds in our country, why is not the obvious solution the one proposed? Why is there now a 1,200 page bill proposed in Congress to completely overhaul and remake what is probably the best health care system in the world...when all that is required is for the government to pick up the insurance tab for the 10 or 20 million uninsured people (no agreement on the actual number) via a simple health care stamp program, a la the current food stamp program? Meet certain standards of financial need and receive government stamps which can be used to purchase health care coverage. At, say, $1,000 annually per person, that would cost $20 billion a year, to be paid out of our general federal revenues. Far less than the trillions estimated under the current proposals. Little bureacracy would be required. Perhaps the people running the food stamp program, slightly augmented, could handle it, since my guess is that many of the same people who now qualify for food stamps would qualify for health care assistance. And perhaps nost importantly, our great health care system would be substantially left alone.

And there is the sinister truth. It is clear to me that it is not benevolence or goodheartedness or sense of community that is triggering the screaming for health care reform, but a desire by some in power to own and control our lives, a desire driven by the same ugly hunger that drove the slavemasters of the past. I am not exaggerating. See my post, If I Were Black.

Make no mistake. There is only freedom and slavery. There is no third choice. There is no halfway measure, no hybrid, no little bit of this, little bit of that. Take away freedom and you have slavery. And in the slave world there are the slaves and the slavemasters.

That is the reality that is being covered up with pseudo- impassioned speeches of caring and concern for the needy. Those in office know exactly what they are doing. They are not innocent. If they were truly for the needy, they would be advocates of a free health care system because we all need freedom. Obama played with the electorate. "Time for a change" he bellowed, but refrained from revealing the true depth and breadth of that change. Truth be known, there is more likely to come.

There is time to resist but it must be done passionately and quickly and withe right intellectual weapons. That is another sinister truth. The opposition party in Washington still doesn't get it.

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