Posted by
Bill Crawford on Monday, March 01, 2010 8:00:13 AM
I've been through most of the West Wing version of health care reform, and it isn't much different than the Senate version. The worst parts of all three get boiled down to two major concepts.
The less scary one is that the HIPA (medical privacy) laws become a joke as soon as this passes. The health care "Administrators" from each state, as well as the designated federal ones (whatever thousand people THAT may be) all have unlimited access to your complete medical records as well as your IRS tax database, in order to properly answer any eligibity questions.
You got that? Yes, I said that was the less scary part. Here is where it really hits the road. The Commerce Clause of the Constitution (regulating interstate commerce) is where this governmemt has gone in the last century to justify doing things that would make a 19th century American blanch. Speaking as somebody who understands that the 20th century forced some adjustments on all of us, I still don't appreciate the appetite the Progressive movement here has for more federal power.
If you think it through, the government holding all of us to a mandate to spend our own money to buy something we don't all agree to carries the Commerce Clause power to a whole new level. This is not a new 'tax'. It is a mandate to buy insurance, and we simply have to find the money in our wallets, or pay the prescribed penalties (which are different in each bill).
This power would allow Washington D.C. to do just about anything it wanted. For these reasons alone, this must be stopped. If it gets passed, these people need to be thrown out this November, and their replacements must scrap it.
Obama talked about being a "transformational" President in at least two interviews I heard on the campaign trail. Was I the only one listening?