OPINION:
America’s health care system has never been a totally free market. But it used to be a freer market than what it is now. And what it is now is a massive bureaucracy that tilts so socialist that even Republicans have joined Democrats in discussing ways to prop up the sector using tax dollars.
Congress is currently debating the expiration of Obamacare subsidies and as an example how far down the path health care has headed toward socialism, notice the difference between Republican and Democrat plans is not a debate of zero subsidies versus subsidies — as it should be. Rather, it’s an argument over subsidy amounts. Republicans are seriously talking about the dollar amounts that should be included in the next health care bill for those of to-be-decided levels of income. Remember when health care used to be a personal responsibility?
Think back to the time when Bill Clinton was president and Hillary Clinton brought forth her particular brand of health care reform, Hillarycare. It wasn’t just opposed by Republicans; it wasn’t just widely criticized by the American people. It was derided as socialism and branded as anti-American. It died a quick death. Universal health care just wasn’t an accepted idea in 1993.
Oh, what a tangled web that’s weaved when a nation forgets from where its freedoms seed.
In the years since, America has undergone massive shifts in societal norms that have led to less belief in God and attendance at church; less teaching of American Exceptionalism and constitutional principles and fact-based civics in schools, both primary and the places of higher learning; lower levels of understanding of the faith-based and religious links between freedom and limited governments; and higher tolerance for illegal behaviors, including those that allow for the mass influx of illegals and migrants from socialist-slash-communist nations into America — illegals and migrants who bring with them never-ending demands for tax-paid cradle-to-grave entitlements. Today’s Democrats love these illegals and their entitlement mindsets. Democrats love to use and exploit these entitlement minded for their own political gain.
That’s how Democrats roll. That’s how they have rolled for years.
But Republicans used to hold the line on much of this entitlement and socialist thinking.
Not so any more.
From The New York Times, in a story on a Senate vote on separate bills to deal with rising health care premiums: “Republicans squelched a bid by Democrats, who had demanded action on the issue during the 43-day government shutdown, to extend the insurance subsidies for three years. Democrats turned back a Republican alternative that would replace the subsidies with an expansion of tax-advantaged health savings accounts and direct payments of up to $1,500 to people who buy the most basic health insurance plans.”
They’re both subsidy plans — it’s just the Democrats don’t run from use of the term, while Republicans call it something different. They call it “tax-advantaged” health savings account planning, combined with “direct payments.” Guess where those tax advantages and direct payments lead? To taxpayers’ pockets. It’s just not a direct path. It’s just not as direct a path as the Democrats take.
But the point of all this health care reform talk on Capitol Hill is this: It doesn’t really belong there.
Health care is best when it’s between the patient and the doctor. It’s also the freest in choice for the patient, and most free market for the system, when it stays between the buyer and provider — the patient and physician.
The more government gets involved, the less free patients are to make their own medical choices — and the less free market the system as a whole becomes, leading to the eventual socialization and, by logical extension, degradation and collapse of American health care.
Democrats are useless at preserving freedoms. It’s expected that Democrats will destroy the free market, and with it, all individual freedoms, as quickly as they can because they want to be the ones in power who decide who gets, who gives, and who has to do without because they must give all. Democrats are socialists are Marxists are communists are destroyers.
But Republicans used to be the good guys — or at least, the not-as-bad-as-the-Democrats’ good guys. Republicans used to be dependable about fighting the fight for freedom and individualism and capitalism and independence and self-reliance and all those things that make liberty so cherished, and that make America the envy of the world.
Republicans can’t be counted upon to make those good fights anymore.
They never should have ceded the idea that health care was a human right without insisting on the clarification that health care is not a taxpayer-funded human right. Once they did that, they opened the doors to the passage of Obamacare, to the acceptance of Obamacare, to the normalization of Obamacare and, as playing now in Congress, the continued subsidizing of Obamacare.
Health care has become a political tool of politicians.
Sadly, Republicans are just as bad as Democrats on wielding this tool. They’re just not quite as openly socialist as the Democrats. Yet.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “God-Given Or Bust: Defeating Marxism and Saving America With Biblical Truths,” is available by clicking HERE.
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