Listening to the people that call in to C-Span can be eye opening and quite frankly somewhat frightening. Many who call are absolutely livid with anger about something, and are quite sure that whatever party they are for had nothing to do with anything bad that ever happens. I am of the opinion that both parties are corrupt, but the Left at least occasionally tries to help the less fortunate, whereas the Right seems fine with running the less fortunate over with a tractor (no, not literally).
But as the health care machine swings into gear, spending $1.4 million dollars A FRIKKEN DAY on lobbying efforts, you have to wonder how those that oppose at least offering a basic health plan can manage to close their eyes at the money being spent to keep health insurance profitable to such an excess that they fear a public plan would undercut their profits, possibly making the companies only somewhat profitable as opposed to absurdly profitable. The arguments that people make like “We don’t want a bureaucrat to decide our health care” are beyond insane, as indeed bureaucrats that work for the insurance companies make decisions daily with regards to what treatment is authorized, and they base this on what will cost them the least, as opposed to what might be best for the patient.
But listening to C-Span, I was struck by what one VERY conservative caller said; That no where in the Constitution did it say the government should provide health care. While health care per se is not mentioned in the Constitution, there is a little something in the preamble which talks of “Promoting the general welfare.” It is difficult to see how this could not very easily be applied to a health care alternative for those too poor to be screwed by insurance companies. And “welfare?” Well who knew the founding fathers were such socialist hippies, using words like welfare and all. Fine, so at the time of the writing of the Constitution, the word welfare didn’t have the same connotation.
But regardless, a government that offers a (workable) health care option should not be seen as some great enemy of freedom, as no one would dream of taking the citizen’s freedom to be severely overcharged away from them. Remembering back to when Medicare was first introduced, it was also labeled as some sort of socialist/communist idea, and as surprising as this is, the health care industry fought against that too.
Wake up morons, if you cannot see that corporations are scared that their cash cow will dry up, then you aren’t evem CLOSE to being free now. Well, unless you call the freedom to be ignorant and blind a freedom worth fighting for. The corporations that are spending $1.4 million per day lobbying are spending this money to prime the pump that may dry up. If they only spend a few million here and there, then the money from us will just keep flowing to them.
