The costs and obligations of health care (and freedom)

Everyone loves free stuff - except the people who are paying for it.

These days, the federal government poobahs seems to have plenty of free stuff available for the asking - $4,500 if you trade in a car they don't like; $1,500 if you install a furnace they do like. Free this, and free that. It almost seems like the government has so much money that soon they will even be able to "Free Tibet."

But wait! The government is actually broke. I mean, when they are not printing new money in the basement, of course. Then again, I suppose paper money that isn't backed by anything is just more debt, isn't it?

If you look at the live-time debt clock at www.usdebtclock.org, you will see that the current national debt is well above $11 trillion and growing at roughly the rate of $1 million a minute. (If you are keeping score that is about $1.5 billion per day.)

So you really have to wonder where our senators and congressmen and women are going to get the money to pay for the $1 trillion-plus health-care plan that President Obama and the Democrats are angling to pass by October.

But it's no mystery.

Unless a particularly rich uncle dies, it's coming from the pockets of U.S. taxpayers, who are already on the hook for about $38,000 each to pay for that national debt we just talked about (again, see www.usdebtclock.org).

Maybe, just maybe, that is why citizens of these United States have been stirring out of their slumber. From Pennsylvania to Arkansas, from Florida to Colorado, people are demanding answers from their senators and representatives about how and why the government is planning to spend billions of dollars on health-care reform when it doesn't have any money.

And with Congress on its summer recess, things have been heating up in town-hall meetings such as the one where Sen. Arlen Specter and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius got booed loudly - one for being a member of Congress, one for not being a member of Congress - and told to start representing the people.

You can just imagine what voters would say to Rep. John Conyers of Michigan after he bragged to the National Press Club that he hadn't read the health-care bill and wouldn't know what it meant even if he HAD read it:

"I love these members that get up and say, Read the bill! Well, what good is reading the bill if it's a thousand pages and you don't have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you've read the bill?"

What good is it? What GOOD is it?

How about this? Its good because then you will know that what you are voting for is 1,000 pages of government-mandated and -controlled bureaucracy - a system that limits free choice, adds immensely to the tax burden, and locks up our children's future into the next century. It's good because then you are doing your job representing "We the People" instead of just rubber-stamping what The Party tells you to do like a good little apparatchik.

Madame Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she didn't think the town-hall protesters were worth taking seriously, dismissing them as "Astroturf" rather than as a genuine grass-roots movement. Sure, some of those citizens may belong to groups which are mobilizing them to make their voices more effective. But why is that any different than the megaphone that has been given to ACORN and MoveOn.org in the past two elections. Do left-wing movements have more credibility than right-wing ones?

Yup, at least if you listen to powerful Democrats. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid accused conservative protesters of trying to 'sabotage" the democratic process, according to an AP story. And right on cue, Reid said that the opponents of health-care reform "don't have any better ideas." It's the same gambit as always - try to shame the opposition as rascals, when in fact these are just citizens who absolutely, 100 percent, oppose any kind of nationalization of health care, plain and simple.

These protesters are not folks who are going to pad their pockets with filthy lucre if they shut down the Democratic plan; they are just trying to keep the little money left in their wallets secure from a government takeover. And it's worth remembering that freedom ironically is one thing that definitely isn't free. It was bought and paid for with blood, sweat and tears and is kept secure only through eternal vigilance.

Freedom of speech is the cornerstone of democracy. Those who try to belittle you into silence today may be the same ones who will come after you tomorrow. There's no need to panic yet, but there are certainly some worrisome signs on the horizon.

Scariest of these was the news last week of a White House program to collect information about opponents of health-care reform through an anonymous tip program. It seems that "all the president's men" have been growing worried by the campaign against their program and posted a request on a White House blog that members of the public report anyone who is spreading "disinformation" about the Democratic health plan.

Translation from Big Brother to English: "Rat out your neighbor."

Here's the actual quote from the White House website:

"There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can't keep track of all of them here at the White House, we're asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov [emphasis added]."

Well, if that doesn't get your "Orwellian nightmare" detector clicking, you might want to bring it in for repairs because it isn't working.

As for something "fishy," how about this:

President Obama says he is not proposing a 'single payer" health-care plan. He makes out like people worried about such a plan are crazy, right-wing extremists who just want to scare voters. Yet many core voters of the Democratic Party do support single-payer health care, the kind of proposal that eliminates competition from the insurance industry and thus turns it into a branch of the federal government.

And even though President Obama says he doesn't support single-payer as a political solution now, he actually has said numerous times in the past that he supports it philosophically.

On June 30, 2003, here is what state legislator Barack Obama told the Illinois AFL-CIO:

"I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health-care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its gross national product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. … [E'verybody in, nobody out. A single-payer health-care plan, a universal health-care plan. And that's what I'd like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House."

Fast forward to 2006: The Democrats take over the House of Representatives, and win a narrow majority in the Senate.

Fast forward to 2008: The Democrats gain a solid majority in the Senate, hold onto their large majority in the House, and win the White House.

Fast forward to 2009: The court-approved victory of comedian Al Franken as Minnesota's junior senator gives President Obama a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

So when President Obama said in 2003, "we may not get there immediately," apparently what he meant was, "We may not get there until 2009."

The time is now; the country is yours. Do something about it. Because if you don't, Congress will do something to you, and you aren't going to like it.

n Frank Miele is managing editor of the Daily Inter Lake. E-mail responses may be sent to edit@dailyinterlake.com