Passing Gas

Sprinkles believe that with the wave of a magic wand and some of their magic health care dust, the world will instantly become a better place. They are wrong.

With the passing by the House Sunday and signing by the president Tuesday of the Democrats’ long suffering health care bill, liberal Democrats have enacted a far reaching power grab which represents one of the largest tax increases in U.S. history, and will likely cause a whole lot more suffering.  I have, in turn, taken to calling liberal Democrats who supported the bill by what they are:  ‘sprinkles.’  Sprinkles, like fairy tale, uh, fairies, run around sprinkling their magic pixie dust on everything and everyone they can get their hands on, promising unicorns to all and pots of gold to the middle class.  Like the sprites in fairy tales, Sprinkles’ magic dust doesn’t actually exist; and therein lies the problem.

In actuality, Sprinkles’ health care bill, passed surreptitiously in the night during March Madness while many Americans were distracted or asleep, will not have a fairy tale ending, but will lead America down a dangerous, nightmarish path toward the horror genre.   To call this new law socialist operationally is probably not appropriate.  Socialism is the goal, to be sure, as Obama and other Sprinkles have openly stated, and this bill is intended to lead us to single payer health care.  However, with the bill’s mandate for all Americans to purchase private insurance, the insurance companies become utilities of the state; not owned by the government, but run by the government.  As defined in the dictionary, fascism in part is any movement or governing ideology “that favors dictatorial government” or “centralized control of private enterprise.”  That sounds a little like what we saw signed into law on Tuesday.  As I stated months ago, this bill represents fascist health care, not socialized medicine.

But what does this mean for Americans in 2014, when this bill largely takes effect?  Well, everyone will have insurance or pay hefty fines, of course.  However, if you think Sprinkles’ vision for free mammograms and vasectomies for everyone is going to be a reality, you are sorely, sorely mistaken.  The government, with their administration of Medicare, is already the largest denier of health care in America.  They reject more claims than any insurance company.  What this means is that those claims about this bill leading to rationing of service, which Sprinkles never denied, are in fact true.

Sprinkles claimed, in their report to the Congressional Budget Office, that in order to pay for their plan, in addition to myriad new taxes, they would also take $500 billion out of Medicare.  And add 30 million people…onto the rolls…of Medicare…Wait, what?  In order to understand this, one first has to be versed in the nature of Sprinkles.  Here’s what happened.  Sprinkles needed the votes of a few Blue Dog Democrats to get to their 216 votes in the House, and with the astronomical cost of the bill during a recession, the health bill was doomed.  Democrats are never going to cut Medicare funding, no matter what they told the C.B.O.   Without that $500 billion which the C.B.O. used in order to determine the cost of the bill last week, the Democrats plan went from being deficit neutral to a proposal for having your cake, and eating it too.  Well, at least, having 500 billion borrowed Chinese cakes and eating them too.  Even with the 10% tax on all indoor tanning salons, 3.8% capital gains tax increase, and a bevy of other taxes, all to begin immediately or in the near future, this bill is going to cost.  A lot.

So, with the new health care plan costing untold sums of money and government’s penchant for regulating, how far fetched is it to believe that government sponsorship of euthanasia is not far around the corner?  Thomas Jefferson once said that “the comparisons of our government with those of Europe are like a comparison of heaven and hell.”  With all of the social engineering and pseudo-socialism of the last century, America never approached the corruption and debilitation of Western Europe–until now.  Prior to the takeover of one-sixth of the U.S. economy by the health care bill, U.S. government spending, largely under Obama, but also under Bush, went from 34.3 percent of GDP to 39.9 percent.  During that same period, Euro zone spending actually became more conservative, going from 48.2 to 47.1 percent.

"We are all socialists now," claimed Newsweek in the wake of the Obama election... With an aging population and skyrocketing entitlement costs, we could be even more socialistic than the Euro zone in just a few short years!

In Oregon, the only state in the U.S. in which euthanasia is already legal, an interesting story played out.  Barbara Wagner, a 64 year old Oregonian with lung cancer who had previously received treatment for her cancer from the Oregon State Health System, again petitioned the state for care after a recurrence, hoping to receive a new treatment recommended by her physician.  The State denied her care, but offered to pay for palliative care, including euthanasia.

In Holland, another country with government controlled care, euthanasia was legalized in 1984, just a few steps ahead of the Sprinkles here stateside.  By 1995 3% of all deaths were by euthanasia.  A Dutch study peer reviewed in the Journal of Medical Ethics showed that, by 1995, one in five instances of euthanasia in Holland was involuntary.  This study, reported in the UK Times, included the study’s conclusion that “a clear majority of cases of euthanasia, both with and without request, go unreported and unchecked.”  Can we reasonably expect that euthanasia, when it comes, won’t be administered in the same way here?

In Canada and the U.K., cancer death rates are 16% and 38% higher, respectively, than the death rate in the U.S.  I’ll be the one to speculate that the state run health systems probably have something to do with this. Personal experience has proven to me that insurance companies are much easier to deal with than the government, which never budges–because it doesn’t have to.

When this health care bill passed, the Census Bureau reports that 85% percent of Americans had health insurance.  80% of Americans polled are happy with their health care.  Plus, I have never met anyone who was denied emergency care and I challenge my readers to.  With Sprinkles’ penchants for regulation and rationing, and the fact that costs will undoubtedly continue to rise, the Sprinkles’ more moribund cousins in Europe have already shown that the Democrats didn’t really pass health care reform, as they promised.  They passed gas.

David Teesdale, is not a fan of the slippery slope, but then again, he has never been a big skier.  Tell him all about how he is jumping to conclusions at david.evans.teesdale@gmail.com or leave your comment here.