The Dems are all over the cable news channels talking about how the health “care” bill means it’s “a new day in America”.
Mark Steyn has it right: Happy Dependence Day!
Whatever is in the bill is an intermediate stage: As the graph posted earlier shows, the governmentalization of health care will accelerate, private insurers will no longer be free to be “insurers” in any meaningful sense of that term (ie, evaluators of risk), and once that’s clear we’ll be on the fast track to Obama’s desired destination of single payer as a fait accomplis.
If Barack Obama does nothing else in his term in office, this will make him one of the most consequential presidents in history. It’s a huge transformative event in Americans’ view of themselves and of the role of government. You can say, oh, well, the polls show most people opposed to it, but, if that mattered, the Dems wouldn’t be doing what they’re doing. Their bet is that it can’t be undone, and that over time, as I’ve been saying for years now, governmentalized health care not only changes the relationship of the citizen to the state but the very character of the people. As I wrote in NR recently, there’s plenty of evidence to support that from Britain, Canada, and elsewhere.
More prosaically, it’s also unaffordable. That’s why one of the first things that middle-rank powers abandon once they go down this road is a global military capability. If you take the view that the U.S. is an imperialist aggressor, congratulations: You can cease worrying. But, if you think that America has been the ultimate guarantor of the post-war global order, it’s less cheery. Five years from now, just as in Canada and Europe two generations ago, we’ll be getting used to announcements of defense cuts to prop up the unsustainable costs of big government at home. And, as the superpower retrenches, America’s enemies will be quick to scent opportunity.
Dan Riehl says Steyn still comes across sounding like a defeatist to me when it matters most.
Victor Davis Hanson says we’ve crossed the Rubicon:
I don’t see why the ram-it-through, health care formula won’t be followed by similar strategies for blanket amnesty, cap and trade, and expansions of the state takeover of cars, banks, student loans, and energy.
However, National Review says Obamacare Isn’t Inevitable – their motto is Nil Desperandum, never despair.
Let’s hope Dan and the NRO editors are right.
Moe Lane‘s my guest in this morning’s podcast at 11AM. We’ll be talking about ObamaCare.
Progressives are fifty years too late. The Europeans nationalized health care after WW2 but are now running out of other people’s money. Now that we are nearly bankrupt progressives want to socialize health care in the US? None of this will matter in the long run. The combination of higher taxes from the tax cuts expiring in 2011 with the higher taxes from Obamacare with this being just the beginning of the biggest credit contraction in eighty years with quantitative easing will push the US economy over the edge into Depression like what happened in the 1930’s for the same reasons. This will drive titanic social and political upheaval and change that will overwhelm conservatives and progressives and all our social and political institutions as the economy descends into Depression.