by Philip Klein
The American Spectator
12/21/2009
“This is not the end of health care reform,” Sen. Tom Harkin declared on the Senate floor after midnight this morning. “This is the beginning of health care reform.”
Harkin was attempting to convince restive liberals that even a scaled back health care bill that did not include their beloved public option was still worth passing. But his comments, along with those made by other Senate Democrats in the week leading up to this morning’s 1 a.m. vote to advance the Senate health care bill, confirmed what critics have been saying throughout the health care debate.
The point isn’t that this one piece of legislation, on its own, will impose a Canadian-style, government-run health care system on the United States immediately. The point is that Democrats are putting infrastructure in place that will allow them to implement a government-run system over time…
…As written, the Senate health care bill will force every American to purchase a government-approved insurance policy or pay a tax. It will expand Medicaid by 15 million people. It will create a new government-run long-term care insurance entitlement, called the Class Act, that even Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad called “a Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing that Bernie Madoff would have been proud of.” And it will create new government-run insurance exchanges on which individuals would use government subsidies to buy government-designed insurance policies.
Taken together, this legislation enables to federal government to get its hands on every aspect of the health care system — and it’s only a matter of time before it tighten its grip. Just listen to what Democrats are saying now.
“What we need to do is lay a strong foundation,” Sen. Ron Wyden said in an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow last week. “A foundation that we can build on in the years ahead. We are not going to get everything we want in round one, but we are going to get a foundation that we are going to build on in the years ahead.”
Sen. Jay Rockefeller told the New Republic “that liberal advocates could try again another year to push for the reforms that didn’t make it into the current bill.” He said, “You know we’re going to be back next year, and the year after that, and the year after that.”
The entire article is here.
