By Eric BaileyAssociate Editor of Sri Lanka Guardian writes from Austin-Texas
(March 30, Austin –Texas, Sri Lanka Guardian) "Not too long ago two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, "We don't know how lucky we are." And the Cuban stopped and said, "How lucky you are! I had someplace to escape to."In that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves."- Ronald Reagan
The United States is unique among nations in that it is often considered as an action or event, not just a place. This is more common among American citizens, who often refer to their country as “the American Experiment” and I have never found a more accurate description of the nation. When American farmers and townsfolk took up their muskets and met a column of British soldiers on the village green in Lexington, Massachusetts in 1775, it started the largest and most long-lived social experiment in the history of humanity. The American people and the Founding Fathers sought to test the theory that a large population could govern itself and prosper with a representative government, limited to the role of protecting the rights of the citizens by a strong constitution, and without being lorded over by a tyrannical monarch or dictator. This idea of Constitutional Republicanism was considered a radically liberal idea at the time, so it is with some amusement that I hear myself referred to as a conservative, while socialists are referred to as liberals, despite the fact their politics are more closely aligned with Benito Mussolini than with the framers of the Constitution. That, however, is a story for another time.
While many other republics and nations claiming to be republics have come and gone, or still remain today, the United States is the only nation able to boast that, for over 230 years, its government has existed solely through the consent of the citizens, having never suffered through a dictatorship or monarchy. From generation to generation, the liberties enshrined in the country’s constitution have enjoyed periods of expansion to encompass more and more Americans, and have also suffered through events that have slowly degraded the personal freedoms of the people. It would be the height of ignorance to claim that the recent healthcare bill has transformed America into a despotic regime, where before it was a paradise of liberty, but it has without a doubt been a serious blow to the United States’ liberal ideals and is the most egregious violation of the citizens’ sovereignty in many decades. It is my most sincere hope that it will be abolished by the Supreme Court and that the American people will let their outrage be known this November by kicking out of office as many of the politicians who voted for this legislation as possible.
There is hardly any limit to the different ways in which a freedom-loving individual can find exception with this bill. It would seem that President Obama and the Democrats in the Senate and House of Representatives agree with this statement as well. It is a little known fact that special loopholes were written into the bill that exempt the President and staff members in the House and Senate, along with their families, from participating in it. Apparently the free market is good enough for the elitists in Washington, but the rest of the American People must submit to government mandates. Efforts by Republican Senators to close this loophole and force lawmakers to be subject to the same laws they impose upon the American people were met by stubborn refusal by Democrats, clearly motivated to protect their own freedom of medical choice.
This provides a clear example of why Democrats have acted with such secrecy throughout the legislative process. Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, unwittingly best summed up the way that Democrats have frozen out the American people from this process when she told members of the media, “We have to pass this bill so we can see what’s in it.” President Obama has likewise continued his longest running lie to the citizens when he signed the bill into law without making the bill available to the public to read in its entirely for five days. During his presidential campaign, Obama swore to do this for every bill before signing it into law, in an effort to increase transparency in government. The world is still waiting for him to do this for even a single piece of legislation. Clearly, the largest spending bill in history, the stimulus bill, nor this healthcare initiative, could afford to waste time by allowing the American people to see what their government was doing to them.
Fortunately, 36 states (the vast majority) have now taken legal action to block the bill, or at least certain portions of it, through state laws and amendments to state constitutions, while multiple additional lawsuits have been proposed to the Supreme Court. It is the hope of those proposing these lawsuits that the Supreme Court will declare the bill unconstitutional and repeal it in its entirety.
One of the first arguments against this law is based on the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, the last amendment in the Bill of Rights. It states, “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states” and many use this key portion of the Constitution to prove that the Federal Government has no legal right to dictate the healthcare laws to the states. To allow the Federal Government to invest itself with new powers, without regard to the Constitution is a dangerous idea. America’s stability is dependent on checks and balances against every branch of government. Congress passes laws and approve budgets, the Executive is in charge of executing policy, not making it, the courts interpret the laws, the states limit the influence of all Federal branches of government, and the Constitution defines every branch’s role and limits all parties to compete within the confines of the law. To dismiss that is to allow the Federal Government to expand its own power at its discretion and invites the arrival tyrannical rule with open arms.
Another, even more popular argument involves the Commerce Clause in the Constitution, which invests Congress with the right, "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes". Within minutes of Obama signing the bill into law, the Commonwealth of Virginia filed a lawsuit claiming this clause does not give Congress the right to force citizens to buy goods and services, nor does it give Congress the right to penalize any citizen who does not purchase certain goods. If such a right exists, there is virtually no limit to what Congress can mandate if it so desires. Imagine the danger many Americans see in the possibility of the Federal Government not only taking progressively more of their hard earned money though various forms of taxation, but also mandating how their remaining money is spent! Such a precedent is totally contrary to personal liberty and property rights. Some weakly counter that vehicle owners are legally mandated to purchase car insurance; however, that mandate is only to insure the property and life of anyone harmed by a collision in which the owner is to blame. No driver is under any obligation to purchase insurance of their own property. This new bill amounts to a government fine for being alive.
Still another Constitutional argument states that while Article I of the Constitution allows Congress to tax and spend to, “provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States” much of the bill is filled with special legislation to win the vote of individual congressmen. While this is a common practice in many pieces of legislation, which may in itself be considered a serious problem for the nation, it is usually overcome by showing how the nation benefits as a whole from, for example, the expansion of an inter-state highway in Texas. While improved Texas roads certainly help the people of that state, improving inter-state highways is vital for trade between all states, so all Americans stand to benefit from maintaining roads that cross state lines. However, it is very difficult to justify special interest portions of this bill, such as allowing only citizens of Florida to get “Medicare Advantage.” It amounts to a government mandate for the preferential treatment of one state, paid for by the taxation of the other 49 states.
It seems very clear that the Supreme Court will have its hands full in the near future, but when you get right down to it, the American Experiment is littered with examples of the government flaunting the Constitution and getting away with it.
This may very well happen again with this bill and the Supreme Court may decide that none of the above arguments are valid. We have to remember that, despite the pedestal we often put Supreme Court judges on in political conversations, they are still just as vulnerable to personal bias and corruption as anyone else, and while I would never suggest we simply ignore the Constitution, it seems only fair to explain how this is not just an unconstitutional bill, but an unethical bill that should be rejected and abolished not just for legal reasons, but for moral reasons.
As Margret Thatcher once said, “The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money.” This bill is beyond any nation’s ability to pay because it seeks to solve a problem by the least efficient method imaginable. The national debt by the end of the year will have risen so dramatically that it will be worth 90% of the United States’ entire Gross Domestic Product. By 2020, that debt will have risen to roughly a third of, not just America’s GDP, but of the entire world’s! If nothing is done to curb the out of control spending in Washington, then before I die, I may see the United States owe more than can be earned by the entire human race.
This catastrophic tax increase is already actually cutting medical benefits. Many companies, including large corporations that employ tens of thousands of people, have announced they will likely be laying off thousands of workers due to new taxes. This will make all those thousands of employees uninsured, along with their entire families. AT&T, the nation’s largest telephone company reported it would take on roughly one billion dollars in new taxes in the First Quarter as a result of this bill. It is an absolute certainty that employees and customers will have these costs transferred to them. While AT&T is suffering the greatest costs, it is by no means a unique case. Verizon Communications, the second largest phone company in the United States has informed its employees that the company’s new tax burdens will be likely transferred to them; a clear warning of pending layoffs. Other major companies that have released statements on their new costs include 150 million dollars from farm equipment producer, Deere & Company, and 100 million dollars in new taxes for industrial manufacturer, Caterpillar Inc. Representatives from all four companies are scheduled to testify before a House of Representatives Energy and Commerce subcommittee. AK Steel Corporation, Valero Energy, and 3M Company are also reporting nearly 100 million dollar tax increases, all of these numbers just representing First Quarter tax hikes, and this list is by no means exhausted. Over 3,500 businesses that currently also provide healthcare for over five million retirees, in addition to their current employees and their families, will be reducing or eliminating medical coverage as a result of this bill, and this is a number that will only increase.
Why are so many businesses suddenly unable to pay for these retirees, or even their current employees? The answer lies at the heart of one of the biggest lies of the entire debate. Democrats endlessly repeated their claims that a bill costing trillions of dollars would somehow save Americans money, and pointed to 500 billion dollars they stole from Medicare, America’s subsidized healthcare for senior citizens, as some sort of proof of their fiscal responsibility. Needless to say that money was easily swallowed whole by the new bill. However, in gutting Medicare, Democrats cut a tax subsidiary to businesses that continued to provide healthcare to retirees, rather than dump them onto the government program. The effect was to greatly improve services to these retirees and cut the tax cost of insuring them by roughly half. Now that the benefit has been abolished, those millions of elderly men and women will be dumped onto Medicare, right as it is suffering massive funding shortfalls, and the taxpayer will be forced to pay the difference. That’s right; let me make that crystal clear. In an effort to improve healthcare in America, over five million elderly people will have their medical benefits cut and the cost of providing them this reduced care will double for the taxpayer. As time goes on, this number will absolutely increase. Additionally, many companies will be bound by contract not to cut benefits to retirees and will instead cut insurance to current employees, forcing them to either find their own policy without the help of the employer (and the discounts businesses and unions can get due to the volume of policies they bring to insurance companies) or by reducing what benefits employees do receive. Clearly Obama’s claim that those who wish to keep their insurance polices may do so, was a lie.
Understand that it simply isn’t true that this is some sort of necessary evil because there is nothing else that can be done to help the uninsured. There are many things that can be done to cut costs, improve service, and insure millions of additional Americans. Democrats absolutely refused to consider them, however, and all Americans are paying the price for their partisan politics.
Democrats rejected a proposal to allow insurance companies to do business across state lines. By forcing the citizens to only purchase insurance from within their state, government regulation has created multiple localized monopolies and oligopolies, resulting in increased prices and decreases in the quality of the services provided. Increasing competition by allowing American companies to do business with any American citizen they want to work with, regardless of their geographical location, benefits both producers and consumers. Insurance companies will have the opportunity to vastly increase their customer base and that potential profit will motivate them to offer lower prices and better services to attract clients. Other insurance companies will then also lower prices and improve services in an effort to prevent their current clients from abandoning them for a new competitor. This is a basic principle of free market capitalism and is the foundation of America’s economic prosperity.
Democrats also rejected proposals to protect hospitals against frivolous lawsuits, which cost hospitals billions of dollars every year. Predatory lawyers have made a fortune off of suing doctors and hospitals in “malpractice claims.” While there are certainly many instances where doctors or medical staff members have done things that warrant legal action, medical institutions are regularly overwhelmed with frivolous lawsuits designed to try and exploit the legal system and win someone else’s hard-earned money. It is such a common scam that it is regularly parodied in American popular culture. This far too common scheme has a series of terrible long-term consequences. It depletes the nation’s population of medical professionals by getting good doctors fired and gives a very good reason for talented, college-bound Americans to find a less risky career option. It also hurts development of medical infrastructure because so much money has to be dedicated by medical practices to defending against the ceaseless waves of lawsuits. Many practices find that their bottom line can no longer afford to purchase new equipment, or hire more staff. Most expensive of all, though, is that it drastically increases insurance costs for every single American. Few doctors wish to be sued and are often dedicated to ensuring that no patient will ever have a successful case against them. To that end, doctors routinely perform unnecessary tests to be sure that no lawyer will be able to ask them why they didn’t try the right procedure on the suing patient. Even if the odds of a test being at all helpful are next to impossible, doctors will regularly administer it for the sake of protecting their careers and livelihoods. This dramatically increases the costs insurance companies have to shoulder and they pass this cost on to all of their clients. Reforms that would limit the amount of money that could be won in a lawsuit, make it more difficult for a lawsuit to be filed, and force the losing party of any legal battle to pay for both sides’ court costs would dramatically reduce the number of frivolous lawsuits, while still protecting those patients who have legitimate grievances and need legal action taken on their behalf. This would allow the medical service industry to expand, while reducing the number of unnecessary procedures. This will also reduce insurance costs nationwide.
Still another improvement stymied by Democrats was the proposal to allow smaller businesses to pool their resources together and purchase insurance as a single unit. This would allow smaller companies to get the same big discounts in insurance policies as larger corporations. This is really a common purchasing tactic across the globe. Let’s imagine a farmer selling a hundred bags of rice for ten dollars each at a market. He makes some money on each bag, but he has to sell most or all of his product in order to make an actual profit. The farmer must live with the risk that he may not be able to sell enough bags of rice to profit. Now let’s imagine a restaurant sends someone to buy a large quantity of supplies. They will likely have many rice sellers to choose from and they want the best price. Our farmer, being a clever man, comes on the idea to offer the restaurant his rice for only nine dollars a bag, cheaper than anyone else, but only if they buy all the rice. The restaurant quickly agrees because they get to buy rice for slightly cheaper than is typical, while the farmer is elated to have sold every bag instantly. Even though he made slightly less money per bag, he more than makes up for it because no bag goes unsold. In the same vein, major corporations and labor unions with thousands of employees ask insurance companies for big discounts that any insurer is happy to accept because of the massive number of new policies that are generated. A small company with only a dozen or so workers cannot possibly get the same discount because they don’t offer the insurance firm enough business. Republican lawmakers tried to pass legislation to deregulate the insurance industry in this regard to allow small businesses to combine their buying power and win the same discounts as larger employers. This would save money for thousands of small businesses and allow their enterprises to expand and employ more people. Unfortunately, Democrats stonewalled the amendment and small businesses continue to be disadvantaged as a result of this bill.
These are only a few of the many free market solutions to improving healthcare in the United States. Agreeing to these reforms would have lowered insurance costs, reduced government spending, reduced unemployment, benefited small businesses and large corporations alike, and would have made insurance affordable for millions of additional Americans. However, it would require the champions of this healthcare bill to admit that government regulation was the problem, rather than the solution to any and all social problems. Instead, Congress decided to drastically increase spending and enact legislation that increases unemployment in the middle of a recession, cuts or eliminates medical benefits for millions of Americans, including over five million retired senior citizens, and will force millions of other citizens to pay for insurance they don’t want, or face stiff fines. It will have a terrible impact on the American economy by causing the national debt to skyrocket and unemployment to continue to rise. It will greatly erode the personal liberties of the American People by creating a de facto tax on being alive, as well as by forcing individuals into a medical system against their will. There are many religious minorities in the United States who are opposed to modern medicine, yet they will be forced to pay for it, whether their faith allows them to use it or not. Congress is mandating a policy that denies citizens freedom to enjoy the fruits of their labor as they see fit and invades the most personal and private aspect of our lives, which are literally our lives themselves. This bill is unconstitutional on multiple levels, is a financial and economic disaster, and is a criminal theft of the American Peoples’ personal liberty. It is absolutely true what Ronald Reagan once said, “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.”
( Eric Bailey can be reached at eb@srilankaguardian.org and at his blog, americandecembrist.com )
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