Losing Freedom One Child At A Time
August 9, 2007
Nobody enjoys a good “Quagmire” more than a Democrat.
Show any Democrat a “Failed Policy” and their first instinct is to screw the American taxpayer and expand it. And when that fails...expand it again and screw the taxpayer even more.
After FDR rammed basic Social Security down the nation’s throat, it was only matter of time until Truman proposed national healthcare in 1945.
After decades of heated debate and opposition, on July 30, 1965 Medicare and Medicaid were signed into law by Lyndon Johnson as part of his "Great Society" debacle...as additions to the already failing (maybe I meant pilfered) Social Security program (Titles XVIII & XIX).
Notice that when the country refused to support national healthcare under the Truman administration, the Democrats just invented creeping national healthcare by slipping these two titles into the already existing Social Security Act.
In a rather gutless maneuver, Congress initiated government subsidized children’s’ healthcare by inserting Section 4901 into the Balanced Budget Act of 1997...thereby amending the Social Security Act by adding a new title XXI, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Talk about backdoor politics.
Recently, the Social Security Trustees have reported that the Medicare hospital insurance trust fund will run out of money in 2018 and the Social Security trust fund will be empty in 2040. These bleak numbers account for doctors taking a 4.7 percent compensation reduction in Medicare fees in each of the next eight years.
Additionally, all of the supposed “trust funds” that finance these programs have been pilfered by Congress and contain IOUs that the taxpayer will have to pay for a second time...plus interest. Retirement and healthcare and infrastructure “trust fund” dollars have been totally stolen by Congress and spent on pork.
Well, here they go again.
When Congress passed the Children's Health and Medicare Protection or CHAMP Act of 2007 (H.R.3162) last week, the Democrats hailed the bill as “a promise to insure 5 million more children who otherwise would have no access to health care, adding to the 6 million children already covered”.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi justified this $50 billion theft by explaining that “This is the children's hour”.
Well, there’s the old catch-all absolution for everything from raising taxes to murder;”I did it for the children”.
But, the fine print of the bill tells a much different story. This unconscionable political pandering and public theft qualifies over 70 percent of the children in the country eligible for carte blanche government-sponsored healthcare...”included are “children” up to the age of 21, whether they are in this country legally or not.”
The government presently promotes the SCHIP program through the Insure Kids Now website. On that site you will find an informational brochure that makes real intentions crystal clear:
Do I have to give my social security number to get health insurance for my child?
No
Do I have to give information about my immigration status in order to get health insurance for my children?
No
It could be worse. The bill also contains wording for the maximum age of a covered “child” that opens a Pandora’s box...” not to exceed 25 years of age, as the State may elect”.
And to assure that no child is left behind, either citizen or illegal immigrant, the bill also provides funding for “ENCOURAGING CULTURALLY APPROPRIATE ENROLLMENT AND RETENTION PRACTICES (SEC. 114. )”...”an amount equal to 75 percent of so much of the sums expended during such quarter...are attributable to translation or interpretation services in connection with the enrollment and retention under this title of children of families for whom English is not the primary language”.
The doctors were not going to be left out and their mouthpiece, the American Medical Association, let Congress know...in words and money. And so did many other special interest groups including the AARP, the March of Dimes, the Catholic Health Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the AAFP (American Academy of Family Physicians).
The AAFP wanted to eliminate any reductions in physician compensation so much that they helped to goad the Senate into approving a 256 percent increase in the federal tobacco tax to fund the CHAMP Bill that restores present physician compensation cuts and even increases physician earnings.
AAFP President, Rick Kellerman, thinks that a confiscatory tobacco tax makes sense because smoking is a habit "for which there is absolutely no social value. If this was a tax on food or gasoline where people have to travel -- you know, to get to their jobs and that sort of thing -- I think that is an argument that we clearly need to think of”.
Apparently when Kellerman condemned behavior with “absolutely no social value” he overlooked the behavior of people procreating like rabbits without the slightest intention of being responsible for their progeny...or people eating Twinkies until they explode.
And that is the point. History has proven that expansion of this program will not stop with either the CHAMP bill or the tobacco tax. It is only a matter of time until the CHAMP bill is expanded...necessitating an expansion of taxes to fund it. Wait until the “fat tax” hits.
Oh, excuse me, I forgot that Nancy Pelosi bragged that “We are able to meet our moral obligation to our children” upon passage of the CHAMP bill.
Silly me...I didn’t realize that your sons and daughters are really “our children”.
The CHAMP bill is another example of pork by any other name.
Both national healthcare guru Hillary and rival-in-the-wings Obama patronized the socialist leaning attendees at the Yearly Kos with healthcare industry disparagement...proving their socialized medicine credentials.
From Hillary...” I wish you'd been around in '93 and '94 when we were trying to get health care. And I'm standing up against the drug companies and the insurance companies.”
From Obama...” The insurance and the drug companies spent $1 billion in lobbying over the last decade...They are not spending that just because they are contributing to the public interest. They have an agenda.”
Of course they have an agenda...Taxpayer Subsidized Healthcare. Big business, insurance companies, drug companies and the healthcare industry (including Lexus-driving MD’s) stand to make a killing on taxpayer rape like the CHAMP bill.
Didn’t anybody notice that starting the day after the November Democrat election victory a barrage of healthcare “reform” advertisements hit the airwaves?
Didn’t anybody notice that these ads were (and still are) sponsored by organizations that nobody ever heard of (like “Together for Health Care”, that includes employers, providers, health plans, unions, the Catholic Healthcare network and consumer groups )?
Healthcare “reform” is being promoted by the special interests that stand to make billions by selling it to a naïve public who think they can save billions by screwing some anonymous taxpayer for those billions.
The only catch is that you will only be screwing your’s and your children’s futures.
Politicians know this...and love it.
Healthcare “reform” is a cake-and eat-it-too issue for the big spenders in Congress.
They get: money from the special interests; votes from the folks that believe in a free lunch and more control over everybody.
Remember, every time the government takes a dollar from the private sector and makes a decision on how to spend it...that is another dollar’s worth of liberty that you lose.
With an almost $3 trillion budget and record tax revenue collections, this government can’t even maintain safe bridges...they build new ones to nowhere while the old ones collapse. Silly me...the Highway Trust Fund has been pilfered and is full of worthless IOUs.
Do you really want to trust your healthcare to these people or their nefarious promises? Do you really want them rationing and deciding your medical care?
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