Last week was a big week for the health-care-insurance-coverage reform debate-dispute-skirmish-thing …
On Tuesday, Aug. 11, at a “town hall” meeting held by President Obama at which America’s Affordable Health Choice Act of 2009 was discussed, a wee wisp of a lass reported to the president that she had seen signs outside prior to the gathering, saying “mean things” about health care reform. As it was later revealed, the girl’s mother had been a coordinator for “Massachusetts Women for Obama” during the 2008 campaign.
On the same day at a town hall meeting held in Texas, a former Texas Obama delegate and member of one of the president’s political organizations falsely represented herself as a pediatric physician as she made an appeal for the current proposed health care reform legislation.
To anyone following this debate – and whose gray matter has not been immersed in the anesthetic of far-left doctrine for years – this is positively surreal. The transparency of the deception we have been witnessing is like the criminal who attempts to lie his way out of a crime that was captured on surveillance video.
Late last week on his Fox News television program, Bill O’Reilly expressed amazement that the organizers of the aforementioned forums – which could include the president’s own staff – would be so stupid as to arrange sham photo-ops that could be so easily uncovered.
President Obama claims that he never said he was a proponent of a single-payer health care system, but there’s video of him claiming that he was. On Aug. 15 in Colorado, he told another “town hall” audience that “if you like your health care plan, you keep your health care plan.” Meanwhile, he’s holding down Medicare Advantage (a popular insurance option preferred by many seniors) with one hand and raising a meat cleaver with the other to the tune of $177 billion in cuts to that program.
What O’Reilly and others didn’t get right away, and what some still don’t get, is that at this stage Obama can tell any lie he likes. Any and every falsehood revealed, every challenge made will be put down by his administration and the establishment press to far-right propagandists and organizers.
On Aug. 12, the Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed by Whole Foods Market Stores CEO John Mackey that favored some really intelligent solutions to America’s health care woes. It also resulted in gutless, far-left zealots attempting to institute a boycott of one of the most employee-friendly employers on the planet. Mackey said that reforming health care ought consist of actual reforms that would neutralize barriers to market freedom and affordability, many of which were instituted by government in the first place.
The oft-mentioned “public option” within the contentious bill is the lynch pin of the legislation, and therein lies the clue: It is an insidious and disingenuous euphemism for socialized health care. For the congressional leadership, and particularly for this president, its passage has nothing – yes, nothing – to do with “repairing” our health care system; it has to do with transferring a massive and unprecedented degree of power and resources to the federal government.
This is why there has never even been mention of anything other than a government-oriented fix; because the health care debacle, like so many other far-left contrivances, has been in the works for decades.
Forgive me, if you will, for employing a “Star Trek” analogy: In the second of five movies based on the 1960s television series, the beloved character Mr. Spock sacrifices his life to save his fellow crew members. In the third film, the crew risks everything to facilitate his resurrection. In the fourth film, Capt. Kirk explains to Spock the rationale for their having done so. In fact, one of the key themes of the original series was the irrational nobility in our humanity: We’re human beings; that’s how we roll.
Our current health care system can be a pain, but Americans seldom suffer for protracted periods of time or die for lack of care. Foundations, churches, families, private citizens and, yes, taxpayers pick up the tab when others cannot. We can use this crisis (that being the one the predatory opportunism of our government has brought on) as a wake-up call indicating our need to:
- Implement prudent market solutions to the problems with our health care system, and
- Never, ever allow ourselves to come so close to the comprehensive Castroturfung of our nation again.
Or we can let delusion, empty promises and perverse ideology frame the debate apropos this largely manufactured problem – which will surely result in the wholesale institution of inhuman, “mean things” for a very long time to come.
