Obama’s Waterloo or Ours
Jul 23, 2009 Current Events
There is a bill coming out of congress that purports to help with the healthcare situation in the country. About this bill, Senator Jim DeMint stated, “If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.” Well I say that it is either his Waterloo or the Waterloo of our American freedom.
As an aspiring independent person, I would like to go in to business for myself. There are many reasons for me to do this; I think that I have unique talent for what I do, I am tired of working for people who do not have my family interests in mind, and I love the free market in healthcare benefits. Right now the freest healthcare market is in the individual policy market. The inequalities in that market are more due to the employer-coverage dominance and government regulation than due to “evil insurance” providers.
Right now, if I want to get an HSA and Catastrophe coverage I can do so with a variety of providers. No employer or government can say no to me. This is because my state has elected to be liberal in the classic sense regarding healthcare administration. Other states have chosen to hurt themselves on this issue.
On page 16 and 17 of this healthcare bill, I have learned that freest market in healthcare will disappear. It clearly states that only current policies can be held and new policies will not be allowed. Despite the fact that this takes away liberty from me that government has no right to take, the result is bad as well. Those policies held prior to the law will discontinue as providers will withdraw and I will be left with only the government as an option.
I will not be sold on promises of great government care. Even though I do not trust these promises coming out on this bill, there is more to it than results for me. This is a question of rights. The government has no right to take from me the choices that God and nature grant me. This goes to the very heart of this nation’s founding.
Many will argue that liberties have already disappeared on this matter, because of prior laws and the monopolization of HMOs, etc. This scenario that has lead us to the precipice of this loss of liberty is entirely of government making. It was not a conspiracy, but what economist Thomas Sowell calls a “Conflict of Visions”. My vision and that of the founding fathers is a constrained vision: aggregate Human nature is fixed, but predictable. People are prone to corruption, waste, and abuse when granted power over others.
The “Un-Constrained Vision” that is the opposite, points to a false malleability over aggregate human nature. Human nature is only malleable, in my view and the view of our founding, on the individual level and this only in humility not unearned power. This bill is unearned power to unconstrained government. The results: withdrawal of former promises made to the old (cut backs in Medicare with no free replacement), high taxes to all brackets in the form of income taxes and “fees” that amount to the same thing, loss of liberty which is enough for me to not support this bill, and many many more negatives.
This is the waterloo of the American experiment. Fore, a loss of liberty on this issue will allow losses in so many areas and not just the atrocious loss in the area of provider choice alone. This will mean that any law that can be interpreted to lower “public healthcare costs” will be justified no matter what the loss of liberty.
This is our battle of the bulge for the independence of human freedom. Which Senators and Congressmen will be our Patton on this matter?
What we need:
- Freedom in choice at all costs (employers offering a policy must also offer a cash alternative with the same tax-protection)
- Freedom of group benefits outside of employer benefits (companies and individuals may pool risk as they choose)
- Expansion of HSA options (any bank may offer them and any plan may be coupled with them)
- Healthcare regulation be returned to its constitutional regulators in accordance with the 10th amendment (to the states and the people respectively)
- State providence of risk-pooling conditions for those un-coverable by regular market coverage (pre-existing conditions)
- Abolition of federal mandates on “concierge coverage” (3rd party payment of regular expenses that could just be payed by HSA money rather than through mounting higher premiums)
Liberty is the key here! Liberty is our heritage and Liberty is our solution. Let the virtue of the people be the solution and let them live or die by it.
Tags: Healthcare, Liberty
The Exclusion of Rights: Life, Liberty, and Happiness’ Pursuit
Jul 22, 2009 Current Events
In the declaration of Independence Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of happiness are discussed as immutable and natural rights that are equal to all. These rights that cannot be taken away by any government are the rationale to throw off oppressive government.
Sadly the concept of rights has been lost among many Americans to the exclusion of the essential and basic rights. In our pursuit of a right to a home, we give up our liberty to keep what we earn as government moves to repair the damage of giving others the means to a home. We lose life at the most innocent level to have the right to choose well after the choice of abstinence was already declined. Over and over again we give more ground on the declaration’s basic rights of human individual sovereignty to allow for some marginal right.
But are these marginal “rights” actually defined properly as rights. The term right is where the deception and confusion lie. It is easy to understand the pursuit concept of the right to pursue happiness, because pursuit is defined easily as a personal endeavor. So, even though we often don’t understand happiness as understood by the signers of the declaration and as understood by Jefferson, we can understand that it is up to us to achieve it. Life and Liberty are as difficult to define as Happiness, but even more difficult to understand with a faulty definition of a right.
Take the right to Life in the declaration. Who grants life? We have a right to live and none can take from us our life without trespassing the natural law of human rights to it. Still, who grants to us the right to live? Is there a resulting government agency in charge of assuring that the right be granted? We do not receive food by assurance, birth quotas by mandate, or any other aspect of the granting of life. On the issue of life, government has only been commissioned to punish the seizure of life from one by another, but it does not grant the means of creation and maintenance of life.
Look at Liberty. Government must prevent the seizure of liberty from one to another without due process and just cause. It does not, however, enforce that one take liberty. If you may but will not choose to do something for yourself, government does not enforce that you take liberty and choose it and all other things. It would cease to be liberty and become merely diversity. It would be absurd to suggest.
Yet, it is this definition of right that we talk of marginal rights. You have a right to choose, so the means of the choice must be provided. You have a right to life, so you must wear your seatbelt. You have a right to work, so a job must be provided. You have a right to a home, so it must be provided. You have a right to transportation, so it must be provided. You have a right to education, so it must be provided. You have a right to health care, so health care must be provided and you must choose it.
Forget arguing whether each is a right or not, it is the definition of right that is faulty. It is not a definition in line with the American concept of rights as in our founding. It is a definition not inline with history beyond our culture. The sly definition of right in modern times means a providence and not pursuance. Providence and pursuance are mutually exclusive—unless one means that I need to pursue the providence of others. If I must pursue the providence of others than how is it a natural right?
I can pursue the retention or liberation of rights as the founders did in the revolutionary war or as the Union did for the slaves of the south or as Moses did by the hand of God. But I cannot call it a right that I have to request providence of it from another. It would not be a right; it would be a concession.
If we have a right to health care and then it must be provided, by whom is it provided. It is conceded by a politician and provided by the confiscated result of another’s labor through his or her taxes and the loss of the value of his or her savings through inflation as the inevitable debt is monetized.
So, the virtue of the “right” to health care is to exclude the natural true rights of our founding. Life may be rationed by bureaucracy. Its pursuit may be thwarted by shifting one’s resources by force. Liberty is traded for the providence of the “right”. If you want of get it yourself or don’t want it, you have no choice. If your pursuit of happiness leads you to risky behavior or to a trade-off of security for some other desired goal, you cannot choose it when providence of another “right” is forced. You have no liberty to choose to be charitable when your labor is confiscated to the concession of another’s “rights”. Your family’s life, liberty, and happiness are at stake when your wealth is confiscated irrespective of your needs.
We must reject any form of involuntary health care, provided health care, and the naming of it as a right under the fallacious definition. Rights are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness among others, by they are up to us to achieve and up to government to assure. A “right” defined differently excludes our true rights and is oppression.
Tags: Happiness, Healthcare, Liberty, Life, Rights