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Jewish World Review Feb 15, 2012/ 22 Shevat, 5772 Free health care? That's rich By Jonah Goldberg
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
"It's not about contraception," thundered He was talking, of course, about the Obama administration's recent decisions first to force large religious employers to pay for birth control and "preventive services" (including sterilization and abortifacient drugs), and its subsequent decision to demand that the relevant insurance companies provide it for "free" instead. The "accommodation" -- the That's not accommodation; that's laundering. Health and Human Services Secretary If anything, President Obama has made the situation worse. The Of course, if religious institutions don't want to violate their consciences, they can simply stop offering health insurance altogether (providing yet another example of how Obama misled voters when he promised that the Affordable Care Act wouldn't cause anyone to lose their current coverage). That would at least allow religious organizations to uphold their principles. The result, however, would be to force taxpayers to subsidize practices many find morally abhorrent. In other words, Obama's solution is to make paying taxes a moral dilemma for many pro-lifers. I think Santorum's argument is entirely right: This is about freedom, full stop. When we empower bureaucrats and politicians to make such huge personal decisions for us, it becomes impossible to avoid trampling on liberty. If you look at the genetic and neuroscience revolutions waiting just offstage, the future holds enormous promise for personalized health care, including individualized genetic therapies. And yet the government is marching faster and faster toward wholesale approaches that prioritize the health of the system over the health of patients. It is impossible to imagine the myriad arbitrary abuses and petty tyrannies that could result. It's amazing that liberals and libertarians can see eye to eye on ending federal bullying on the sale of raw milk, but liberals see no threats from a federal takeover of health care and the transformation of insurers into de facto branches of the government. The freedom argument is old hat now. "Obamacare" supporters shrug off horror stories from Well, here's something to ponder: If Rick Santorum's warning doesn't scare you, maybe But let's imagine the caricature is fair and he really is the boogeyman Is that who you want in charge of your health care? If not him, what about some other conservative president down the road? It's really this simple: A government empowered to steamroll the people with the rosaries has the same power to trample the citizens with the ovaries. If you're afraid of
© 2006 TMS |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||||
