Even conservatives betray America on health care

So, Warren Buffet woke up and called foul to Obamacare. John Boehner finally found a spine and tried to call a halt to Obamacare. But does it matter? Isn't it all too little, too late?

For years Warren Buffet, a man touted for his business savvy, has been supporting the Democratic Party, which, for over 50 years, has been spending like drunken sailors –with my apologies, as Ronald Reagan said, to drunken sailors: at least they sober up.

How could Buffet not have known during all those years he was coughing up millions to the Dems, that the statist policies of the Democrats – dictatorially raising minimum wage, overregulation of business practices, wanton taxation of corporate profit and dis-incentivizing accomplishment through progressive private income taxation, not to mention the demonization of corporations themselves – would be bad for business?

I presume that the "Wizard of Omaha," whose house I pass frequently on my way to and from shopping, is not stupid financially. He presumably gets the idea that you cannot spend more than you make, nor can you pay people to be idle. At least you cannot do that for 50 years without your business failing. Why then does he accept this nonsense if it is practiced by the government? Does he give them a pass because they are spending other people's money? He fights his own tax bill. Does he not think every working American is tired of a system based on theft of income?

And then there is Mr. Boehner, the honorable speaker of the House, who with his other Republican cronies have sold the American people down the river by veering far off the constitutional authority of Congress, continuing to vote for Medicare and Medicaid and now Obamacare.

News flash: There is no authority written in the Constitution that gives Mr. Boehner or anyone else in Congress the authority to pay for, dispense, withhold or in anyway regulate medical care.

They have voted repeatedly – even my own representative, fairly conservative Congressman Steve King, for programs that confiscate tax dollars by force from some people in order to dispense care as they see fit using the rules of Health and Human Services.

The result is a system of health care that is priced out of reach of the average person. Certainly it is priced out of reach for anyone who wants to pay with cash. The result too, is out of control "regulopathy" – a disease of overregulation that increases costs everywhere in the production chain of medicine, creates shortages and creates waiting lists for care due to shortages of providers and supplies.

Most recently my medical student son informed me that due to the shortage of TB testing injections they are now screening health workers with "questionnaires." Fabulous. One hundred years of progress in preventing tuberculosis through real antigen-antibody screening, reduced to 18th-century history-taking techniques. We were almost out of several anesthetic agents recently. What's next, Kentucky bourbon for anesthesia like our medical forefathers used in the Civil War?

This latest government shut down, and the weak, squeaky protest by Mr. Buffet are sad and futile attempts to stop a problem that is beyond such measures. It is not Obamacare.

In fact, Nancy Pelosi missed the real line, as she should have said, "It doesn't matter what is in the bill," because Congress has abrogated its duty by allowing the unelected regulators of HHS (and many other sister agencies in other fields) to pass regulations that carry the force of law – even if the 2,800 pages of Obamacare were nothing more than the translation of a Greek epic poem.

As long as Congress gives HHS the authority to make unlimited numbers of rules to fine providers and to imprison people for not following its regulations, and as long as Congress – and ultimately we the people – accept this nonsense, we are doomed to being ruled by regulators, not represented by people we elect. By contrast even Harry Reid is an improvement.

In the Constitution, only Congress is given the power, "To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof."

In other words, only Congress can make laws – not unelected desk occupiers in HHS.

But until we hold Congress to the Constitution, it doesn't matter what law they pass anywhere about anything. You can go to jail for all sorts of violations of their little bureaucrat regulations, which is how Dr. Natale ended in Federal Prison for something he wrote in an operative note and how an ophthalmologist in San Diego ended in federal prison for choosing the wrong CPT codes and how a businessman ended in prison for importing the wrong subspecies of crustacean.

So thanks for nothing, Mr. Buffet and Mr. Boehner. I only hope you will come to understand how little the words from your mouths matter now in stopping the collapse of America, which Obamacare did not start, but will be the straw on the camel's back to finish.