The "health care" legislation shoved through the House by the Democratic leaders is an enormous power grab like nothing else in history. Ms. Pelosi is not interested in seeing that the uninsured get health care. She cares about the accumulation of power and control. The Wall Street Journal has published two recent editorials about the disaster of this bill. The title of one is, "The Worst Bill Ever." To quote a couple of paragraphs:
In a rational political world, this 1,990-page runaway train would have been derailed months ago. With spending and debt already at record peacetime levels, the bill creates a new and probably unrepealable middle-class entitlement that is designed to expand over time. Taxes will need to rise precipitously, even as ObamaCare so dramatically expands government control of health care that eventually all medicine will be rationed via politics.
Yet at this point, Democrats have dumped any pretense of genuine bipartisan "reform" and moved into the realm of pure power politics as they race against the unpopularity of their own agenda. The goal is to ram through whatever income-redistribution scheme they can claim to be "universal coverage." The result will be destructive on every level—for the health-care system, for the country's fiscal condition, and ultimately for American freedom and prosperity.
One of the House's bill claims to be able to trim hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud from Medicare's budget to help pay for the new plan. But if Medicare is truly this mismanaged, then government-dominated health care is not a model to follow.
An article written by Deroy Murdock, a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University, highlights some interesting comparisons. He points out that a year ago, candidate Barack Obama warned that Republican rule meant cuts in Medicare, lower-quality care, and paying more for drugs. "But wait....These massive Medicare cuts bear no Republican fingerprints. They are--gasp--handcrafted by Democrats."
He goes on to say, "Had the GOP mulled even a fraction of these cuts, Republican National Headquarters would be a smoking ruin. GOP members of Congress would be clad in Kevlar." He includes quotes about dire consequences for Medicare and Medicade (if Republicans had their way) from the late Ted Kennedy, Sen. Chris Dodd, and then Rep. Sherrod Brown (D. Ohio).
He ends with the note that Democrats are in charge now and "...they practically can taste the government medicine they covet." The mainstream media would have lambasted the Republicans as they did in 1995 when a GOP Congress considered a 6% Medicare growth, rather than the 10% that was projected. Now, however, they are an active part of the power grab.
