For those who doubt that the purpose of the Democratic health care “reform” is a government takeover of our health-care system—and that the only unsettled issue in their minds is the best way to get there as quickly as possible—watch this:
Those opposed to the expansion of the abortion industry should consider this comment from Ed Morrissey:
On the campaign trail, Obama told Planned Parenthood that the Freedom of Choice Act, which would eliminate state restrictions on abortion and repeal the Hyde Amendment ban on federal funding for it, would be his first legislative priority. ObamaCare allows him to pass FOCA without the head-on fight. If the public option remains in the bill and it covers abortion, that will have the de facto effect of repealing the Hyde Amendment. The interstate nature of ObamaCare and the public plan may also allow the Department of Justice to fight state abortion restrictions, such as parental notification, on the grounds that the regulations interfere with interstate commerce. It’s FOCA by other means.
For those still dubious about Sarah Palin’s invocation of “death panels,” ponder this from Nat Hentoff (no fundamentalist Republican):
I was not intimidated during J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI hunt for reporters like me who criticized him. I railed against the Bush-Cheney war on the Bill of Rights without blinking. But now I am finally scared of a White House administration. President Obama’s desired health care reform intends that a federal board (similar to the British model)—as in the Center for Health Outcomes Research and Evaluation in a current Democratic bill—decides whether your quality of life, regardless of your political party, merits government-controlled funds to keep you alive. Watch for that life-decider in the final bill. It’s already in the stimulus bill signed into law. . . .
No matter what Congress does when it returns from its recess, rationing is a basic part of Obama’s eventual master health care plan. Here is what Obama said in an April 28 New York Times interview (quoted in Washington Times July 9 editorial) in which he describes a government end-of-life services guide for the citizenry as we get to a certain age, or are in a certain grave condition. Our government will undertake, he says, a “very difficult democratic conversation” about how “the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care” costs.
And if anyone is wondering why all the fuss—is this really that big a deal?—let Andy McCarthy explain:
These last seven months ought to tell us that the usual political rules don’t apply when predicting this president’s behavior. His purpose is revolutionary change in an American society he grew up understanding to be fundamentally unjust, racist, materialist, imperialist, and the agent of global misery. He is in Washington to transform the nation from the top down. Nationalized health care is key for him. If he gets it, sovereignty shifts from the citizen to the state. By law, government will be empowered to manage minute details of our lives. Over time—when, as the American Thinker’s Joseph Ashby observes, a “1,000-page health-care law explodes into many thousands of pages of regulatory codes”—that is precisely what government will do.
Obama is not a normal politician. He’s a visionary, and using health care to radically expand the scope of government happens to be central to his vision. For my money (if I have any left), achieving it is more important to him than is getting reelected. His poll numbers and those of congressional Democrats may keep plunging (for the latter, there must come a point where that is statistically impossible), but they have the votes to Rahm this thing through.
And if it comes to that, they will most certainly try, unless enough Democrats in Congress get cold feet. Sure, that wouldn’t be what the president promised to get elected, but so far, that hasn’t stopped him yet: