President Barack Obama invited a select group to the White House this week to hear him demand an “up-or-down” vote on his ObamaCare medical plan. Congress — and the people — should say, “Down!”
In a moment of levity about the very serious subject, the president said, “Everything there is to say about health care has been said, and just about everyone has said it.” The audience understandably laughed.
Seriously, he’s right about the extent of the discussions. Summing up, the government should not direct medical care. And the government, meaning the taxpayers, should not be loaded with a trillion-dollar-plus additional burden for a program that is obviously both unconstitutional and economically unsound.
We do want all of our people to have the medical care they really need. But most Americans do not want socialized medicine — and the big tax bill that would go with it.
The obvious right answer is private, personal, employer-employee, free-choice insurance policies for the great majority of our people, with many options ranging from plans with “super frills” to those with “bare-bones” coverage, selected by individual Americans in a competitive insurance market. And then there should be local and state charitable medical care for the people who really cannot afford it otherwise.
But ObamaCare would result in government domination of medical care, adding 30 million people who either choose not to buy insurance or can’t afford it, with an added cost of more than a trillion dollars a year, when federal budgets already are more than a trillion dollars in the red each year despite too-high taxes.
The federal government can do many things and should do some things. Which ones? The ones the Constitution of the United States says it should do. Providing medical care for our people is not one of them. No such thing was ever remotely contemplated by our Constitution, and what is not specifically called for is specifically prohibited. We should abide by the Constitution.
There are some things that obviously need to be improved in our medical care system. They should be addressed. The best answer to meet our people’s medical needs is for government to get out of the picture and let the people, medical care providers, insurance companies, employees and employers work in the traditional American free enterprise system to meet varied needs through personal choices and responsibility — with charitable governmental programs for the truly needy.