We interrupt your regularly scheduled blog

To talk to you for a minute about health care.  Before I get too far afield from my usual writing topics, the following disclaimers apply: I’m a gun writer.  I’m not a health care writer, or even really much of a political writer these days.  But after I watched CNN’s live coverage of the House vote on the 1.1 TRILLION (that’s trillion with a “t”) health care bill, I almost felt compelled to address it.  First, seeing as no one (not even our representatives) has read the 1990 page bill, here are some fun things that are in the bill that you may not know about.  Also, by way of comparison: my copy of Moby Dick is 583 pages long.  You could fit 3.41 copies of the entire text of Moby Dick into the health care bill.  Awesome.

Despite how upset I am about none of our legislators reading this bill, or how angry I am that our government has decided to ram legislation down our throats that 53% of the country doesn’t want, that’s not actually want I want to talk to you about today.  No, today I want to explain a very simple concept that is the fundamental tenet behind my opposition to government run healthcare in any form.  I believe, and I always have, that individual rights and liberties are the foundation of our country.  Government run healthcare undercuts those right at a fundamental level, because it places the power in the hands of unelected bureaucrats to remove the most important of all individual rights: to do stuff that is bad for you.

Before my libertarian homeboys get all up in arms because drugs are illegal and whatnot, it is worth pointing out that the bulk of the prohibitions on stuff that’s bad for you right now were passed by our elected representatives – people that we could have unelected for doing things that aren’t in the Constitution.  Now, if our President were to eventually sign this bill into law, it places that power squarely in the hands of a bureaucrat making $35,000 a year who hates his job.  You like skydiving?  Too dangerous, now you can’t sky dive if you want health care.  Do you like barbeque?  Too much risk for a heart attack, now certain foods are illegal if you want health care.

At the root of all of my disagreement with government health care is the phrase most often used by pro-abortion activists, “my body, my choice.”  A government run health care scam has the power to remove that choice from you by denying you care simply because your lifestyle choices are not in line with what the .gov thinks is best for you.  Supporting the Health Care Bill is effectively the same as surrendering your right as an individual to make your own choices to the government.  While I’m not saying that the passage of this bill would be a bullet in the brain of liberty, it certainly is a lot further down the slippery slope than I thought I’d see in my lifetime.

6 Comments

  1. Honestly, I don’t think that the bill will ban BBQ and skydiving. Seriously, look at England: they still have both.

    Rather, the effect is far more subtle and sinister: slipping standards that result in dirty hospitals, wait times, treatment and solutions stuck in 21st century because competition has been stifled.

    Truly a sad state of affairs…

  2. I’ll freely admit that I’m taking a walk on the slippery slope with the points above. The bill probably won’t ban smoking, skydiving, or things like that; but the fact that it places the power in the hands of the government to do exactly that without so much as a vote troubles me.

  3. I’ll add the following (somewhat) humorous insight:

    If you think that IDPA and USPSA shooters are bad at “gaming it”, then wait until we start finding evidence of corruption among the soon-to-come “health czars”/bureaucrats…

    Don’t like the wait time? Put some skin in the game and we’ll bump you up a few spaces.

    Hell, the Feebs already have too many cases of medical corruption to investigate; They’re going to be hard pressed finding your “doctors note” (signed by his secretary, of course) that keeps you on workers comp. for a bit longer because of your “bad back”.

    Ask anyone who ever lived in an Eastern European communist “paradise” about the bribery was rampant in the health care system…

  4. I’d say the far worse thing is that government-run health care will force me to subsidize those folks who smoke or drink or sexualize everything or eat bacon at every meal or jump off of bridges or engage in any of the other behaviors that my fiscal calculus determines to be too risky, even if I think they’d be fun. Once again the government gouges the responsible citizen to enable the lifestyles of wanton idiots.

    Freedom used to mean, “You roll the dice, you take what you get.” Now it means Sumdood gets to pick my pocket whenever he comes up snake-eyes. Here’s a hint: it only looks like I’m winning because I’m not gambling. Somehow the positive results I enjoy from making good choices isn’t “fair.” Well, there’s only so much “fairness” a man will tolerate.

  5. “whatever power you give the State to do things FOR you carries with it the equivalent power to do things TO you.
    –Albert Jay Nock

  6. Sorry Caleb but that pistol shooting is exposing you to above average levels of lead and you’re gonna have to stop unless you want some heavy fines.

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