The Tyrannical Nationalization of Health Insurance

Obama promised us that his nationalized health insurance plan would allow us to keep the health insurance plan we already had if we liked it. It turns out that he means to do absolutely no more than just exactly that. The bill before Congress is far more effective in nationalizing health insurance than anyone sane would imagine given Obama's assurance. But these Democrat socialists are power-grubbing scoundrels with a great deal of cunning. Anyone with this much cunning is not stupid, they are either strangely insane or flat out evil.

Investor's Business Daily has started the process of actually reading the 1,018 page bill, which you can be sure none of our Congressmen and Senators will actually do. On page 16, they found:

Under the Orwellian header of "Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage," the "Limitation On New Enrollment" section of the bill clearly states:

"Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day" of the year the legislation becomes law.

The editorial in IBD goes on to explain:

So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won't be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.

From the beginning, opponents of the public option plan have warned that if the government gets into the business of offering subsidized health insurance coverage, the private insurance market will wither. Drawn by a public option that will be 30% to 40% cheaper than their current premiums because taxpayers will be funding it, employers will gladly scrap their private plans and go with Washington's coverage.

It is now clear that a smaller and smaller group of people will have insurance coverage of their own choosing. Eventually those grandfathered in will all be on Medicare and there will be no more private health insurance plans available. In practice, these plans will disappear even before that date since the numbers of people staying with their old plan will become to small for the plan to be continued.

The end result: Government will make all decisions on what medical procedures will be covered under health insurance, who will receive those procedures and who will not, how long a patient will wait for treatment, who is too old to bother with treatment, whose sickness is too expensive to treat, which minority groups will receive special treatment and which will be ignored, which babies are healthy enough to be allowed birth, how obsolete medical equipment will become, and which new equipment will be bought and in what numbers. Individual patients and their doctors will have no say. All decisions will indeed be in the hands of bureaucrats.

This is a very serious matter. We must all shout it down until we are hoarse and then write until we can write no more. This tyrannical takeover of the care of our bodies must be denied. What could be more important?