Are These Reasons Unreasonable?

Looks like the Senate version of the Health Care bill is likely to become law in the near future. As far as I can tell, the main motivation is to provide health insurance for a group of people that don't currently have any (not that they don't have health care, they just don't have insurance). Ask your average liberal and, as a broad smile covers their face, they'll tell you how great it will be to extend medical coverage to so many people.

However, there are also motivations to refrain from passing this bill. Let me try to list some of them.

1) The new law will require citizens to buy health insurance as a condition of existence . This is a first for our nation: become part of the collective or go to jail. In my view, it flies in the face of our nation's true independent spirit and violates the fundamental human right to choose your path through life. I have yet to speak to a liberal who even thought about this before getting excited about the bill, let alone saw it as a cause for worry. One suggested to me, after a day of chewing on it, that it's no different from the draft, when young men were forced to serve in the military. Given that the draft was temporary, full of exceptions (religious or conscientious objectors) and used only in national emergency, I don't see the equivalence. Will I be allowed to excuse myself from the new insurance requirement based on my fundamental beliefs in liberty and self-determination?

This new health bill says without hesitation: as a condition of living in this "free" nation, you will "pitch in". A seal is being broken that cannot and will not be repaired. I offer this guarantee: it's the first of many such tragedies.

2) The CBO conclusion that this legislation is fiscally responsible is a lie. The analysis was done over 10 years, the first 4 of which provide no benefits. This means that there are 10 years of revenue collection with only 6 years of expenses. Of course the numbers look friendly. But what about the following 10 years? Even assuming that it's possible to predict the financial viability of a government program 20 years out, no one is stressing about it. My sense is that the liberals know it will be a financial failure, requiring even more government intervention eventually leading to a single (govt) payer system. This is the holy grail.

3) Poor people being given tax money that they can use to buy their health insurance is yet another case of perpetuating the entitlement mentality and trapping people in their status quo. There has been nothing more cruel done to poor people over the last 50 years than giving them resources without earning them and with no requirements. How many generations of kids have to grow up watching Mom (and maybe Dad) dependent on govt for food, money, housing and now health care? Hey liberals, how did the housing projects of the 1960s and 70s work out? Don't you yet feel guilty for throwing these people into your prison cell? Could your expectations of the poor get any lower?

4) The "Health Care is a Right" slogan badly distorts the concept of a right. The founders of our nation had it correct: a right is inalienable, bestowed upon humans by our creator. A right can be violated, but not taken away. And a right is also not something that exists in one century but not another (Did Martha Washington have a "right" to a mammogram?) . Actual rights include freedom of speech, assembly and religion. Notice that none of these require another human to supply anything. There is no such thing as an inherent right for one human to control another.

But that is what is meant by the right to health care. Since MRIs, pharmaceuticals, surgeries and the like do not exist in nature and they must be created by other humans, a right to health care means a right to the labor of another ... absolutely and completely counter to our nation's ideals. I know that liberals feel strongly enough that the discussion should never come to this, that people should happily help their neighbor ... so strongly that they don't even bat an eye when forcing one human to help another. But slavery is what's happening nonetheless. Civilized slavery, but slavery.

5) There are better ways to reform health care, mostly by placing more responsibility and a sense of the costs involved closer to the individual. People should know that health care is not free, that there is not an infinite supply and that they should be smarter about their choices. It's not an all-you-can-eat buffet. But, people don't want to deal with the economic side of health care and this legislation further insulates the average patient. Here's a great article on that subject.

6) The significant problems with this health care bill will lead to another one. Medicare is on the way to bankruptcy and will need to be fixed. Liberals like to brag that Medicare has such a low administrative costs (3% compared to 20% for most insurance companies), but that's not exactly a fair comparison: insurance companies have to stay in business. My company could have a low overhead too if we had no expectation of financial performance. This new law, like Medicare, will go bankrupt and will have to be fixed. We're not passing a law right now, we're advocating a long series of them.

Please, liberals, tell me why these reasons are unreasonable and why we should tumble down this path. I'm sure I'm missing something.