{This article is based on a recent rant of mine on a Yahoo! Group}
This is worth repeating — from the rooftops: Anything bad can be made worse by turning it over to the government. And when they take it over, they take credit for meeting a need already filled by a community by people like you and I. Even if you do not subscribe to this belief, the fact that it is populat sentiment ought to dismiss the fallacy that people not wanting government to fix their lives is not some callous denial of a real problem, merely the rejection of what in some views is an unacceptable solution.
If you really believe it’s society’s job to take care of it’s members unequivocally — good for you. The left and right agree on that more than you think. But you better damn well be able to discern why there IS a disagreement, and it comes down to the vital distinction between GOVERNMENT and SOCIETY. Even in an ideal republic or democracy, they are not the same. “We the People” aren’t elected to office — bureaucrats are — and it is more and more difficult to defend the belief that such people are still part of “We” in terms of common goals and private interests.
Societies with little or no government WORK. How? Through free association, charity, volunteerism, and all sorts of things that one could argue are actually diminished by the intrusion of government. The more we are taxed, the less say we have about HOW we contribute to society (charity, etc.). And the more taxes flow upward (to the Federal level, for example), the more decisions are being taken out the hands of our local communities. We have less and less say as communities, neighborhoods, and individuals.
Amusingly, some {expletive deleted} started a website to protest “Socialized Fire Departments” to make fun of people criticizing government-funded health care. This more than misses the point above, doesn’t it? Imagine if fire departments WERE funded and run by the Feds instead of their local communities, and their budget allocation and rules were decided by politicians rather than volunteers and hands-on experts in the field who are familiar with the community’s needs. I need not say more.
And don’t be fooled into thinking preserving a private option (temporarily?) makes it all good — every version of the bill I’ve seen places all sorts of controls throughout the industry, public and private, right down to the employer and individual. It’s not government PROVIDING health care that’s bad — it’s the POLITICIZING of it. Isn’t that the problem with the existing system? It was back door deals with politicians and special interest votes that eliminated, state by state, the competition our elected officials now decry as a reason THEY should enter the arena with our own tax dollars.
And this doesn’t even touch on the unexamined yet vitally pertinent example of how Medicaid and Medicare spiked costs on their inception, pressing us onward toward the current situation all the faster. So if you don’t agree with the statement starting this article, you have a lot of explaining to do. Or rather, generations of Congressmen do.
But if anything, take this one point to consideration: The primary objection to a more nationally-run and regulated system is NOT a rejection of the ideal of universal access to health care in our society. It’s about the extent by which “Obamacare” will place a bureaucratic politic even MORE in charge of an important part of our lives, with our own money disproportionately as usual, and to a predictably negative result.