By: GUY PETROZIELLO
Bucks County Courier Times
By Matt Benchener
Middletown, Founder of TruePolitics.net
September 6, 2009
…The foundation of ObamaCare is the idea of collectivism, that what is best for the whole (the collective) is what is just for the individual. So, if you choose to have a “needless” tonsillectomy for your child, and the procedure raises the overall cost of care for the nation, you’ve done something wrong. Currently, it is your choice what procedures and medicine are available to you and your family. Under ObamaCare, if a procedure falls outside of the government’s cost-efficient estimates, it will be disallowed. If a prescription is deemed “cost-ineffective,” it will be deemed unnecessary…
…Under ObamaCare, a preventable choice that damages the whole is simply unacceptable. Indeed, Democrats have already proposed a massive tax on sugary drinks and trans-fatty foods; it is easy to imagine caloric control limits or compulsory weight reduction programs for the obese.
And why stop there? The New England Journal of Medicine recently reported that “healthcare costs for smokers at a given age are as much as 40 percent higher than those for nonsmokers.” Shouldn’t everyone who participates in ObamaCare be required to quit smoking? And what about alcohol consumption, high carbohydrate diets, or high stress jobs? Each has been linked to increased medical costs. In a collectivist system, such choices must be limited.
Addressing the prospects of universal care in the United States, Scott W. Atlas, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor at Stanford University’s Medical Center put it best: “There is no mystery here – it has been proved the world over that when government dictates prices on services, those services become unavailable. And when bureaucrats dictate medical care, it is the patient who suffers most. Directly or indirectly, choice becomes limited, and health care becomes rationed.”
What the government provides, it also controls. What the government controls it also rations…
Read the complete article here.
