Obamacare Not For President or Congressional Leaders

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  • 03/02/2023

The “Vote-a-Rama” got into full swing last night as the Senate worked through amendments to the healthcare reconciliation bill.  The floor action lasted until the wee hours, adjourning at 3:00 am after Republicans successfully raised two points of order under the Byrd rule concerning Pell grants, having these items stripped from the healthcare legislation.  The health care reconciliation bill will go back to the House for yet another vote after the Senate amendment process is completed.

Senate Democrats rejected an amendment last night offered by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) that would have required the President, Vice President, cabinet members, top White House staff, and the congressional leadership and committee staff who drafted the proposal to purchase their health insurance through the government exchanges like everyone else.

“As a result, President Obama will not have to live under the Obama healthcare reforms, and neither will the congressional staff who helped to write the overhaul,” Grassley said.  “The message to the people at the grassroots is that it’s good enough for you, but not for us.”

Senate Democrats also voted 57-42 in favor of providing Viagra to sex offenders and 54-43 to give a ringing endorsement of the backroom, sweetheart deals for individual states such as Louisiana that remain in the bill.  (I single out Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana’s $300 million sweetheart deal simply because of the prime comic relief afforded by her attempts to defend her actions from the Senate floor.)

The Senate reconvenes at 9:45 am to continue the amendment voting today with a final Senate vote on the reconciliation bill expected this afternoon.

The Backlash: Reform Turns Personal

That blaring headline in Politico yesterday declared that the government takeover of healthcare only got personal when alleged threats had been made against the Democrat legislators voting in favor of health care reform.

How could anything as intimate as someone’s private health decisions be anything but personal?

As an example of these alleged death threats, Rep. Bart Stupak’s office released a voicemail of a woman saying, “Think about this, millions of people out there wish you ill.”  That’s what they’re calling death threats these days?

Average, everyday Americans are affected by this government takeover of healthcare.  And they’re upset.  These are life and death matters that politicians want to centralize in Washington, giving nameless, faceless government bureaucrats the power to deny medical services. Medicare already denies procedures to our seniors at twice the rate of any private insurance company, the glaring difference being Medicare doesn’t simply deny payment.  When Medicare refuses coverage the procedure, not the payment, is denied.

Removing over half a trillion dollars from Medicare is not going to improve that circumstance.  Further, it’s not difficult to read that writing on the wall for the rest of our health care system. 

And when one-size-fits-all medical decisions kill people, there is no taking it back.  That just may have a few people upset.

Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) pulled off his mask on Monday when he told Detroit WJR News/Talk 760 radio talk show host Paul W. Smith that Democrat “reforms” wouldn’t be in place until 2014 because it takes time for the government to get control over people.

“The harsh fact of the matter is when you're going to pass legislation that will cover 300 [million] American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people,” Dingell said.

Control the people.  That’s a stunning admission.  It’s what opponents of this government takeover have warned all along:  This was never about health and it most certainly isn’t about care.  It’s about cradle-to-grave government control over “the people.”

We, the people, do not take kindly to throwing grandma under the bus.  That’s not a slogan - that’s a real-life consequence when the President says grandma can’t have pacemaker surgery, she needs to just take the pain pill.

It’s an issue of personal religious conscience when the government takes your hard-earned money and uses it to pay for killing innocent babies in the womb.

From time immemorial matters of such import have sparred great wars as a means to settle.  Politics is a continuation of war by other means.

Our founding fathers settled the issue of princelings who seek to rule over their fellow man using the full force of government tyranny. It is the duty of our elected representatives to be stewards of our liberty, not to reshape our representative republic by their own designs.

Read the Declaration of Independence and you’ll find that tyranny is timeless.  The long train of abuses articulated by our founders in that historic document is as relevant today as when they were first written.  Consider these few:

“He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.” 

Gee, that sounds eerily like basing the comparative effectiveness research death panels that make the cookie cutter decisions about your health care at the National Institutes of Health in Washington, D.C.

“He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.” 

Let’s see, the Pay Czar, Car Czar, Health Choices Czar, TARP Czar, Diversity Czar, the Safe Schools Czar and a Behavioral Science Czar, to name but a few of the dozens of unaccountable czars appointed by this administration.

“He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation.” 

If that doesn’t bring to mind the United Nations nothing ever will.

“For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent.”

Healthcare mandates and taxes and fines or jail time.  The American people overwhelmingly reject the federal government seizing control of our health care system using “government-approved” insurance mandates, fines and taxation.

“In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”

I think that one speaks for itself.

A free people will not go quietly into the night.  We will not “move on” from the healthcare takeover.  The November elections loom large.

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