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Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Health care reform will bankrupt America


November 16, 2009

Dr. Allen D. Unruh

The last nail in the coffin of capitalism will be a government takeover of health care. All doctors will be slaves of the state, while all patients will be wards.

This undermines the entire Declaration of Independence, where the inalienable (God-given) right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is guaranteed.

President Obama has promised fundamental reform, which replaces God-given rights with government-given rights.

The first lesson in economics is there never are enough resources to meet everyone's desires. The first lesson of politics is to ignore the first lesson in economics.

Karl Marx said, "The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism." C.S. Lewis said, "Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised to the good of its victims may be the most oppressive." And Thomas Jefferson said, "I predict happiness for the American people if they can keep the government from confiscating the fruits of their labor under the pretense of taking care of them."

"One of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the great struggle for independence," Charles Beard said. Government health care will be like a hospital gown: You think you're covered, but you're not.

What is at stake in the health care reform debate? Your health, your freedom and your life. Your economic opportunity to prosper will change to a survival mind-set.

We are told the sky will fall if we don't let government take over health care immediately. A better metaphor is that the Titanic is sinking, and bureaucrats want the country to get on board because it will be too late next year. It's time we send some lifeboats because all Americans are in the same boat.

There is one principle about a boat: You can't sink half of it. We either live in freedom or in servitude. There is no in between.

Obama has said, "We are our brother's keeper." But the good Samaritan walked across the road to help the beaten pilgrim. He didn't call a social welfare agency.

They tell us we should just "trust them." Has the federal government given even one reason why we should trust it? Medicare costs nine times more than projected estimates and is going broke fast. In history, there never has been a government program that has come in under budget.

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of White House chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, has been appointed to two key positions: health policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research. He bluntly admits that cuts will not be painless.

In the Feb. 27, 2008, issue of Health Affairs, Emanuel wrote, "Savings will require changing how doctors think about their patients." In the June 18 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, he added that doctors take the Hippocratic oath "as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others."

Ezekiel Emanuel wants doctors to look beyond the needs of their patients and consider social justice such as whether the money could be better spent on somebody else. The people who fall through the cracks are the elderly, people in chronic pain, the disabled and those who require expensive procedures. He explicitly defends discrimination against older patients.

Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, urged Congress to delegate its own authority over Medicare to a new, presidentially appointed bureaucracy that wouldn't be accountable to the public.

The current version of health care reform undermines the First, Fourth, Fifth, 10th and 13th amendments to the Constitution. America will go bankrupt, freedom will be lost, health care costs will go up dramatically, health care quality will go down, health care workers will be demoralized and millions of jobs will be lost.

This is not about health care. It's about tyranny and power.

There is only one solution: Kill the bill.

We must give a pink slip in the next election to everyone who votes for it. Market solutions are not allowed on the table.

Edmund Burke said, "Bad laws are the worst form of tyranny." Jefferson said, "Rebellion to tyranny is obedience to God."

Nothing less than the future of civilization is at stake.



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