Sarah Palin and the Dominoes of Health Care Reform
October 18th, 2009
Toppling dominoes is fun. It’s fascinating to plan and set up an elaborate line that curves and weaves across the floor, carefully placing each small block to make sure that when the first one is finally nudged over, it starts the momentum that makes all of the rest eventually fall. The havoc is short lived and easily remedied, and when you’re finished you can always put the dominoes back in the box.
Government programs are frequently the lead domino in a row of cause and effect. Sometimes they’re implemented with less recognition of consequences than you plan for when you begin to set up dominoes on your dining room table.
With Saturday’s Facebook Note, Good Intentions Aren’t Enough with Health Care Reform, Governor Palin points out some of the dominoes that health care reform will topple. She first highlights a few of the problems with the non-Baucus bill of the Senate Finance Committee (Please remember as William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection wrote, THERE IS NO BAUCUS BILL. She is responding to the “concepts” of the Committee.) and warns:
Unintended consequences always result from top-down big government plans like the current health care proposals, and we can’t afford to ignore that fact again.
She outlines some of the consequences set up by the non-Baucus bill, mentioning higher health insurance costs and lower wages and states:
The Senate Finance bill is effectively a middle class tax increase, and as Holtz-Eakin points out, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation those making less than $200,000 will be hit hardest. [6]
She documents the numerous broken promises of President Obama regarding (1) the Stimulus Plan, (2) his pledge of no closed-door meetings with health care lobbyists and (3) his refusal to sign any non-emergency bills before they have been posted on the web for five days, providing opportunity for public review and comment.
Just in case they didn’t get the message the first time, she reminds the Senate Finance Committee that real money can be saved by tort reform before she wryly concludes:
Here’s a novel idea. Instead of working contrary to the free market, let’s embrace the free market. Instead of going to war with certain private sector companies, let’s embrace real private-sector competition and allow consumers to purchase plans across state lines. Instead of taxing the so-called “Cadillac” plans that people get through their employers, let’s give individuals who purchase their own health care the same tax benefits we currently give employer-provided health care recipients. Instead of crippling Medicare, let’s reform it by providing recipients with vouchers so that they can purchase their own coverage.
Now is the time to make your voices heard before it’s too late. If we don’t fight for the market-oriented, patient-centered, and result-driven reform plan that we deserve, we’ll be left with the disastrous unintended consequences of the plans currently being cooked up in Washington.
Sarah Palin is warning this is one domino row that shouldn’t be toppled.
Crossposted to Be John Galt and RedState Member Diaries.
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H/T: Hot Air, Sarah Palin Facebook Notes, Legal Insurrection, Rogue Doe Cartoon: used by permission.
Written by Jeanette
Posted in Uncategorized
3 Responses to “Sarah Palin and the Dominoes of Health Care Reform”
[...] Crossposted to Be John Galt and J’s Cafe Nette. [...]
[...] to J’s Cafe Nette and RedState Member Diaries. [...]
Evidently, now that our “friends” in the Big Health Insurance lobby have discovered they wont make enough money off us with the millions of new mandated customers in Obamacare, they have cried out for BIG FINES and Penalties on us!
It seems they still do not much of a problem with the Federal Government dictating you BUY private health insurance as a condition of LIVING in the US! This is clearly unconstitutional and a HUGE ceding of power to the state!
I could give a rats tail if the “fines” are enough to force all the Youts to buy health insurance so the scheme is “workable” – thats beside the point.
I care about our indiviual liberties and freedom!
But many of us conservatives are blindly rushing to their defense – we shouldnt fall for this!
Plus, the Health Insurance lobby ares you are a fools if you think any scheme that relies on government force in place of free market principle would EVER be workable – a government takeover was ALWAYS the end game for this so called “reform”!
And of course its beyond naive to acknowlede “good intentions” by those pimping this change, we know full and well its designed to be unworkable by the left as their state goal for the outset of the so-called “reform” was to force a single-payer system on the country in 5 to 10 years!
In light of the PWC report, lets not forget that for months on end the Health Insurance lobby was colluding with the enemy in the WH to take away our liberties and advocated the use of FORCE to make us buy there product.
I care about having a truly free market in health care and health insurance, not simply about helping the Insurance companies get fines up enough in an already Unconstitutional law to keep them profitable.
Until they renounce the Individual Mandate provision, they are not to be trusted any more then Reid, Pelosi, etc as this all could be nothing but political theater to throw us off track.
A government takeover is still result of a plan without a government option entitlement – we need to keep the focus on the Individual Mandate and insist that the Health Insurance lobby also drop this requirement a condition for our support.
Yes, I understand that private Health Insurance is threatened without the Individual Mandate because of the “preexsisting condition” and “community rating” mandates. However, that is their own lobbiests putting them into that box with backdoor deals with a dishonest WH (it was always the lefts intent to destroy Private Health Insurance, any fool could see thatt). We are obligated to fight for our Individual Liberties and the concept of a Free Market/Private Health Insurance. However, we are under NO obligation to defend the creation of a quasi-government monopoly under the guise of supposedly private Health Insurance.
Isnt this the kind of government/business/union corruption we are all enraged about?
Here is a great NRO blog that sums up the situation:
“AHIP/PriceWaterhouse Blowback? [John R. Graham]
Full disclosure (in the spirit of James C. Capretta): I don’t do consulting work for private health insurers, and I doubt they’d have me. I share Benjamin Zycher’s frustration with the various corporate interests, including AHIP (the health-insurers’ trade association), which have managed to get the enemy (government) “exactly where they want us,” with their eager appeasement of the ruling faction.
All intellectual capitalists since Adam Smith have known that we cannot rely on business to carry our philosophical water for us, but even I’m amazed that AHIP has waited so long to release a report (so ably summarized by Mr. Capretta), that describes how the Baucus memorandum (it’s not a “bill”) will destroy Americans’ access to private health care. Indeed, they waited so long that the PriceWaterhouseCoopers report has revived the so-called “public option.”
The health insurers have become so committed to the idea of the federal government ordering people to buy health insurance, that the media and most laypeople are convinced that the “public option” is the only way to prevent insurers from gouging beneficiaries.
The government is not going to change tack as long as the corporate interests are encouraging it to assume greater power over Americans’ access to medical services. Instead, it’s time for AHIP to change tack, abandon the ill-founded notion of mandatory health insurance, and adopt a policy advocating individual choice and responsibility.”
I would make too much of this supposed “treachery” the health insurance lobby and the various Obama/Democrats threats on anti-trust etc. I think this all more “political theater” for the masses….
Until such time as the Health Insruance lobby drops their call for the Unconstitutional Individual Mandate, they only have themselves to blame for cutting deals with devils….
I think this is all just show to keep the far left appeased that they are “fighting” evil big health insurance and will have a “fall guy” to blame when the government option is dropped as negotiated….
It also keeps Republican and Conservatives tied to unconditionally supporting the health insurance lobby – which is not good politically nor something we should do until they renounce the WHOLE backroom deal and OPPOSE THE INDIVIDUAL MANDATE!