This is Part 14 in my series about ObamaCare health care exchanges. Be sure to read the entire series here.
Health care exchanges are simply this: State-level bureaucracies that ObamaCare must coerce into existence. Without them, there is no ObamaCare implementation. With them, the federal government has the hands it needs to meddle into and control the health care of every American citizen.
Why We Must Fight ObamaCare to the Bitter End
This is my third time posting Mark Steyn’s article… read it front to back to understand the core of the healthcare battle.
It’s from the April 2009 issue of Imprimis from Hillsdale College… the feature article was Mark Steyn’s “Live Free or Die.” It was and still is the very best position against nationalized health care that I have found. It is worth the extra time it takes to read if you really want to understand why we must fight this battle against nationalized, socialized health care to the bitter end.The entire article is in PDF format at the end of this post.
Excerpts from “Live Free or Die:”
“But forget the money, the deficit, the debt, the big numbers with the 12 zeroes on the end of them. So-called fiscal conservatives often miss the point. The problem isn’t the cost. These programs would still be wrong even if Bill Gates wrote a check to cover them each month. They’re wrong because they deform the relationship between the citizen and the state. Even if there were no financial consequences, the moral and even spiritual consequences would still be fatal.”
“There are stages to the enervation of free peoples. America, which held out against the trend, is now at Stage One: The benign paternalist state promises to make all those worries about mortgages, debt, and health care disappear.”
“Once you have government health care, it can be used to justify almost any restraint on freedom: After all, if the state has to cure you, it surely has an interest in preventing you needing treatment in the first place. That’s the argument behind, for example, mandatory motorcycle helmets, or the creepy teams of government nutritionists currently going door to door in Britain and conducting a ‘health audit’ of the contents of your refrigerator. They’re not yet confiscating your Twinkies; they just want to take a census of how many you have. So you do all this for the ‘free’ health care—and in the end you may not get the ‘free’ health care anyway. Under Britain’s National Health Service, for example, smokers in Manchester have been denied treatment for heart disease, and the obese in Suffolk are refused hip and knee replacements. Patricia Hewitt, the British Health Secretary, says that it’s appropriate to decline treatment on the basis of ‘lifestyle choices.’ Smokers and the obese may look at their gay neighbor having unprotected sex with multiple partners, and wonder why his ‘lifestyle choices’ get a pass while theirs don’t. But that’s the point: Tyranny is always whimsical.”
“Stage Two of societal enervation—when the state as guarantor of all your basic needs becomes increasingly comfortable with regulating your behavior. Free peoples who were once willing to give their lives for liberty can be persuaded very quickly to relinquish their liberties for a quiet life.”
“Stage Three: When the populace has agreed to become wards of the state, it’s a mere difference of degree to start regulating their thoughts.”
“And then comes Stage Four, in which dissenting ideas and even words are labeled as “hatred.” In effect, the language itself becomes a means of control. Despite the smiley-face banalities, the tyranny becomes more naked: In Britain, a land with rampant property crime, undercover constables nevertheless find time to dine at curry restaurants on Friday nights to monitor adjoining tables lest someone in private conversation should make a racist remark.”
Read the entire article here:
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Michelle Morin is Mom4Freedom, a conservative blogger, speaker, and patriot for freedom and America’s founding principles. Join her for valuable freedom updates here.
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