It isn’t as though we needed a reminder of the iconoclastic nature of Congressional Democrats but just to make sure we haven’t forgotten what they represent, they have scheduled the final Senate vote on healthcare reform for Christmas Eve.
Isn’t ironic that they chose the day that many of us will spend preparing to celebrate the birth of Jesus to move this legislation forward? For Christians, Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promise, the messiah that was to free the world from suffering and the lamb that would eventually be offered for the forgiveness of all sins. The founding fathers recognized that man’s rights descended from God and that all mankind was born free through the grace of God.
The unalienable rights so carefully described by these extraordinary men were not accorded by the act of a beneficent King or through the acts of an enlightened government; they are divine, eternal and inexorable. Jesus represents God’s promise that man should not be slave to man and that our rights, both enumerated and implied in the Constitution, are an affirmation of that liberty. Curiously, the healthcare bill places many of those rights in jeopardy as the roughly seventy new agencies and administrative boards formed under this legislation will for the first time, allow government to determine how we live our lives.
We will find ourselves under government mandate to live healthier lives based on a government agency’s definition of healthy. The bill already contains a special tax on beverages containing sugar and on tanning salons since the current heath advisory panels have already determined these are unhealthy. As the left gain more control the extremists will have more to say about your life than you will.
Animal rights activists have tried to advance their agenda by promoting the health benefits of a vegetarian lifestyle for decades. Studies conducted with the same unscrupulous manipulation of data corrupting the Climate Change argument have already suggested that consuming meat presents a hazard to one’s health. Cass Sunstein, Obama’s regulatory Czar, has already weighed in on the subject in previous writings and would be more than happy to “nudge” people into a meat-free lifestyle using the regulatory authority of the government and the weight of punitive “sin” taxes to achieve that goal.
Gun control, animal rights, leisure activities, hunting and a whole host of other things that we take for granted now, can all be reigned in given the broad brush healthcare officials will be given to paint with. This bill is not centered on healthcare but on preventative care which would give the administration an incredible amount of new power where basic lifestyle choices are concerned.
Worse of all, the sanctity of life itself will be jeopardized by this bill. The new agencies and health panels will mete out care based on your current health, age and their actuarial assessment of how many years of “quality” life you have remaining. As Dad approaches 80, the usual course of medical intervention for prostate cancer may be limited to a regimen of less effective treatment only because it is less costly. For the first time in American history, choices will be made by authoritative government boards that will determine how resources will be allocated based on the need to contain the overall cost of healthcare and not on the need of the patient or the desired outcome of treatment. Grandma may get a prescription for pain medication and a wheelchair instead of the hip replacement she would receive now.
This legislation enacts new taxes and the cuts in Medicare reimbursements immediately even though the benefits of the bill are not fully realized for four years; a little accounting trick to show “budget neutrality” over a ten year period simply to gain passage of the bill. The truth is that the cuts are not going to reduce the cost of the program but to fund a host of entirely new entitlement programs, including subsidies for the low income purchase of insurance through the exchange. Without the promised cuts going to reduce the cost of the overall program, the program must go into financial difficulty in year five through fifteen, forcing cuts in services and draconian rationing of healthcare to anyone that does not fall under the government definition of a “contributing” member of society.
No? Well that was one of the prescribed ideas of Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel, architect of the Healthcare Bill and brother of White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel. Dr. Emmanuel believes in redefining the doctors Hippocratic Oath to allow assisted suicide and euthanasia. He also believes in the rationing of care based on an assessment of the patient’s ability to contribute to society and that only government can possess the impartiality required to make those assessments.
In order to pass this legislation, the government has had to manipulate the definition of commerce just to claim the authority for government to intervene in healthcare. They are using the Commerce Clause in the Constitution to find that authority, similar to what FDR did in the 1930’s. Even though you are seeking local medical care from a local doctor and purchasing your medicine from a local pharmacy, the government makes the leap that even this activity has a broad effect on the interstate relationship of the entire healthcare industry. That is a sham and they know it.
The fact is, and the general admission from Congressman James Clyburn is that most of what Congress does is not authorized in the Constitution. It is only the complacency of the American public that has allowed this to continue for as long as it has. Progressives have created an entire segment of the population that not only pays no taxes at all, but actually receives payments from the government for being good little dependents. With only 53% of the population actually paying taxes, we are fast approaching the tipping point where an election based on issues instead of preserving a government entitlement will no longer be possible.
The American people have been lied to since the debate on healthcare began. The truth now, is as it always was, is that the government’s lust for healthcare reform is that they must reduce the costs of their own failed and corrupt programs of Medicare and Medicaid. These programs were in trouble a mere three years after their inception and the short term cure in 1968 was to raid the Social Security trust fund and use that money to prop up Medicare/Medicaid, leaving Social Security as a hollow promise that they would deal with later. Well, later is now and thanks to the Federal government, all three programs are bankrupt and threatening the solvency of the United States. Without an enormous infusion of money, the government will have to admit their gross mismanagement and close the books on the Federal entitlement system or close the doors of the Federal government. The easiest way to achieve that was to channel the American healthcare system through the Federal entitlement machine. Dumping one sixth of our economy into the wide end of that funnel and regulating what drips out of the small end through cuts in benefits and services will allow them to keep the illusion of success alive, but for how long?
In the end, best estimates are saying that the current healthcare bill will only extend the life of Medicare and Medicare through 2019. Beyond that, it will have to collapse because there is little left they can take from us to keep it going. Not to worry, the loss of freedoms guaranteed by this bill will allow our benevolent government to make even more of those hard decisions on our behalf and euthanasia may even become a mandate based on who and what you are. If we let our rights dissolve now, how can we stop it then?
Don’t forget the government already has a free hand to do what the rest of us are still prohibited from doing. Government is still the only place in America where it is allowable to use race in the execution of policy. Government is still the only place where prejudice is allowable e.g.: rich vs. poor in the tax system, right vs. left in public broadcasting and let’s not forget government vs. religion in nearly every expression of faith. The government’s National Endowment for the Arts is prohibited from using public funds for religious art so it will not support the creation of a devotional scene involving a crucifix but it will find art where a crucifix is submerged in a beaker of urine.
As we near Christmas all Americans must ask themselves what they believe. What are our rights? Where do those rights come from? Most importantly, will we heed the call of duty Thomas Jefferson charged us with and fulfill our obligation to defend those rights for our progeny?
Paul
Isn’t ironic that they chose the day that many of us will spend preparing to celebrate the birth of Jesus to move this legislation forward? For Christians, Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promise, the messiah that was to free the world from suffering and the lamb that would eventually be offered for the forgiveness of all sins. The founding fathers recognized that man’s rights descended from God and that all mankind was born free through the grace of God.
The unalienable rights so carefully described by these extraordinary men were not accorded by the act of a beneficent King or through the acts of an enlightened government; they are divine, eternal and inexorable. Jesus represents God’s promise that man should not be slave to man and that our rights, both enumerated and implied in the Constitution, are an affirmation of that liberty. Curiously, the healthcare bill places many of those rights in jeopardy as the roughly seventy new agencies and administrative boards formed under this legislation will for the first time, allow government to determine how we live our lives.
We will find ourselves under government mandate to live healthier lives based on a government agency’s definition of healthy. The bill already contains a special tax on beverages containing sugar and on tanning salons since the current heath advisory panels have already determined these are unhealthy. As the left gain more control the extremists will have more to say about your life than you will.
Animal rights activists have tried to advance their agenda by promoting the health benefits of a vegetarian lifestyle for decades. Studies conducted with the same unscrupulous manipulation of data corrupting the Climate Change argument have already suggested that consuming meat presents a hazard to one’s health. Cass Sunstein, Obama’s regulatory Czar, has already weighed in on the subject in previous writings and would be more than happy to “nudge” people into a meat-free lifestyle using the regulatory authority of the government and the weight of punitive “sin” taxes to achieve that goal.
Gun control, animal rights, leisure activities, hunting and a whole host of other things that we take for granted now, can all be reigned in given the broad brush healthcare officials will be given to paint with. This bill is not centered on healthcare but on preventative care which would give the administration an incredible amount of new power where basic lifestyle choices are concerned.
Worse of all, the sanctity of life itself will be jeopardized by this bill. The new agencies and health panels will mete out care based on your current health, age and their actuarial assessment of how many years of “quality” life you have remaining. As Dad approaches 80, the usual course of medical intervention for prostate cancer may be limited to a regimen of less effective treatment only because it is less costly. For the first time in American history, choices will be made by authoritative government boards that will determine how resources will be allocated based on the need to contain the overall cost of healthcare and not on the need of the patient or the desired outcome of treatment. Grandma may get a prescription for pain medication and a wheelchair instead of the hip replacement she would receive now.
This legislation enacts new taxes and the cuts in Medicare reimbursements immediately even though the benefits of the bill are not fully realized for four years; a little accounting trick to show “budget neutrality” over a ten year period simply to gain passage of the bill. The truth is that the cuts are not going to reduce the cost of the program but to fund a host of entirely new entitlement programs, including subsidies for the low income purchase of insurance through the exchange. Without the promised cuts going to reduce the cost of the overall program, the program must go into financial difficulty in year five through fifteen, forcing cuts in services and draconian rationing of healthcare to anyone that does not fall under the government definition of a “contributing” member of society.
No? Well that was one of the prescribed ideas of Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel, architect of the Healthcare Bill and brother of White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel. Dr. Emmanuel believes in redefining the doctors Hippocratic Oath to allow assisted suicide and euthanasia. He also believes in the rationing of care based on an assessment of the patient’s ability to contribute to society and that only government can possess the impartiality required to make those assessments.
In order to pass this legislation, the government has had to manipulate the definition of commerce just to claim the authority for government to intervene in healthcare. They are using the Commerce Clause in the Constitution to find that authority, similar to what FDR did in the 1930’s. Even though you are seeking local medical care from a local doctor and purchasing your medicine from a local pharmacy, the government makes the leap that even this activity has a broad effect on the interstate relationship of the entire healthcare industry. That is a sham and they know it.
The fact is, and the general admission from Congressman James Clyburn is that most of what Congress does is not authorized in the Constitution. It is only the complacency of the American public that has allowed this to continue for as long as it has. Progressives have created an entire segment of the population that not only pays no taxes at all, but actually receives payments from the government for being good little dependents. With only 53% of the population actually paying taxes, we are fast approaching the tipping point where an election based on issues instead of preserving a government entitlement will no longer be possible.
The American people have been lied to since the debate on healthcare began. The truth now, is as it always was, is that the government’s lust for healthcare reform is that they must reduce the costs of their own failed and corrupt programs of Medicare and Medicaid. These programs were in trouble a mere three years after their inception and the short term cure in 1968 was to raid the Social Security trust fund and use that money to prop up Medicare/Medicaid, leaving Social Security as a hollow promise that they would deal with later. Well, later is now and thanks to the Federal government, all three programs are bankrupt and threatening the solvency of the United States. Without an enormous infusion of money, the government will have to admit their gross mismanagement and close the books on the Federal entitlement system or close the doors of the Federal government. The easiest way to achieve that was to channel the American healthcare system through the Federal entitlement machine. Dumping one sixth of our economy into the wide end of that funnel and regulating what drips out of the small end through cuts in benefits and services will allow them to keep the illusion of success alive, but for how long?
In the end, best estimates are saying that the current healthcare bill will only extend the life of Medicare and Medicare through 2019. Beyond that, it will have to collapse because there is little left they can take from us to keep it going. Not to worry, the loss of freedoms guaranteed by this bill will allow our benevolent government to make even more of those hard decisions on our behalf and euthanasia may even become a mandate based on who and what you are. If we let our rights dissolve now, how can we stop it then?
Don’t forget the government already has a free hand to do what the rest of us are still prohibited from doing. Government is still the only place in America where it is allowable to use race in the execution of policy. Government is still the only place where prejudice is allowable e.g.: rich vs. poor in the tax system, right vs. left in public broadcasting and let’s not forget government vs. religion in nearly every expression of faith. The government’s National Endowment for the Arts is prohibited from using public funds for religious art so it will not support the creation of a devotional scene involving a crucifix but it will find art where a crucifix is submerged in a beaker of urine.
As we near Christmas all Americans must ask themselves what they believe. What are our rights? Where do those rights come from? Most importantly, will we heed the call of duty Thomas Jefferson charged us with and fulfill our obligation to defend those rights for our progeny?
Paul
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