Obamacare vs. America

By JR Dieckmann

I think most Americans don't want any more "help" from this government. How about giving the free market a chance while we still have some of it left? Obama and Pelosi have no understanding of the Constitution and not a clue what the role of government is in this country. The Constitution was written to place limits on the federal government, not to give it unlimited domain upon every whim of a politician.

Congress has absolutely no constitutional authority to meddle in healthcare. Healthcare is never mentioned in the Constitution as something over which the federal government has domain. Powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the states and to the people. That is what the Constitution says, and that is what the founders intended. Or to put it another way; "if it's in the yellow pages, the government shouldn't be doing it."

Needless to say, this government has no constitutional authority to meddle with, or take over the banking industry, the mortgage industry, the auto industry, the energy industry, or any other privately run industry. It has no legal authority to be involved in education, or a thousand other things it tries to manage. These actions by Obama and his cronies are illegal and unauthorized and should not be respected or accepted by the American people.

The Congress and the president are pledged to protect and defend the Constitution. They are required by their oath of office to respect the constitutional limits placed on the federal government. Anything less is a violation of their oath of office and an offense against the highest law of the land. Isn't it about time that the American people held their elected officials accountable to their oath of office?

Americans don't need government to take care of them. We can take care of ourselves and have always been expected to do so. Personal responsibility and freedom from government oppression is what has made this country great and prosperous. America is about people earning their own way and using their own money to pay for what they want and need. That is the American way.

Now we have a government that wants to baby-sit us and make all of our decisions for us. I guess some people need that — mainly the people who voted to put these charlatans in office. It's high time that those people learned to stand on their own two feet and take care of themselves. We cannot afford, nor do we want, to be their babysitters any longer.

The whole purpose of the Constitution is to define the federal government and to establish a separation of powers between federal authority and the states. That is why the enumerated powers specified in Article 1, Section 8 were then reinforced with the 9th and 10th Amendments, to make the federal limitations perfectly clear to anyone reading the document.

Those powers granted to the federal government are limited for a reason: to retain and preserve liberty and freedom to the states and to the people. When the federal government infringes on the rights of the states, it steals freedom and liberty from the people and increases its own power over us. The federal government has been doing this for decades and nobody seems to notice as they usurp our power and our freedom one small step at a time.

Wake up America! We are having the liberty rug pulled right out from under us, and very soon there will be none left to stand on. Fortunately, several states have begun to realize this and are now either considering, or working on, legislation in their state legislatures to deny compliance with federal healthcare laws and restore their 9th and 10th Amendment rights and powers. Will it be strong enough and soon enough to protect what is rightfully and constitutionally ours?

In addition to flagrant violations of these rights, the current healthcare bill also includes heinous and blatant violations of the 4th Amendment which prohibits federal intrusion into your person, property, and papers. Obamacare legislation includes mandates to access all of your personal records and bank accounts, and to construct a federal database on all of the nation's citizens. The only thing missing is an American Gestapo to make full use of the information. I fear that is not far off in the plans of this Obama Administration.

Federally mandated swine flu shots also constitute a serious violation of the 4th Amendment. They are going to have to put a gun to my head before they stick that needle in me. I don't trust this government, their motives, or their flu shots.

The same thing applies to their 2010 census form. Questions on that form are a severe violation of the 4th Amendment and are not in compliance with the constitutional mandate to count the population every 10 years. They have no business knowing what kind of toilet I have, or what time I leave for work. Isn't it odd that they aren't interested in knowing if I'm in this country legally or not?

I will not comply and urge everyone else to do the same. Do you want ACORN, and SEIU to have this information about you? Do you trust them with it? They are inseparable in their symbiotic relationship with Obama, who has decided that his administration instead of the Labor Dept. should now run the census.

Trust in government is essential to a free republic. When the people can no longer trust their government, it is their right to abolish that government and form a new one that represents their best interests. That comes from the Declaration of Independence, the original founding document of this country. The time has come to re-invoke the Declaration of Independence and declare our independence from this government which has gone way too far, and is far too corrupt to ever be repaired. Or in military terms: "FUBAR."

We now have a government that wants to run every aspect of our lives as though we are children who need to be told what kind of light bulbs to use, what cars to drive, what to eat, how much energy to use, what to pay employees, what to pay executives, who not to listen to on the radio, what to do, what not to do — yikes, it's gone way too far! We don't need it. We don't want it. And we will not accept it. We are proud and free Americans. We are not children or the subjects of some third world dictator, but that is exactly how this government is treating us.

Obama has been painting healthcare as a "crisis" just like everything else he wants to take over. There is no "crisis" in healthcare. We didn't just lose half of our doctors and hospitals — that would be a crisis. There has been a slowly growing problem with the costs of healthcare but then the costs of everything have gone up too since this Congress started passing legislation based on "global warming."

There have always been those who could not afford to buy health insurance just like there have always been those who could not afford to buy a house or a new car. Does that then mean that there is a housing and transportation crisis as well? No, not anymore anyway. The Obama government has already taken those industries over, also without constitutional authority. The only "crises" are those created or imagined by this government.

There will always be some who cannot afford health insurance costs. Currently, they just get their healthcare for free by not paying for it at emergency rooms but at everyone else's expense. There should be some government provided safety net for those who can prove that their income doesn't allow them to afford health insurance — but it should be at the state and local levels. There is no need to tear down and remake the entire national healthcare industry in the image of the government.

There are ways of reducing the cost of healthcare — I have suggested several here, but this Democrat controlled government will not consider any of them. Tort reform is one, dealing with rampant and costly illegal immigration is another. Congress should pass no healthcare reform plan that doesn't address tort reform and the added burden of illegal aliens.

Clearly, among the largest contributors to the cost of healthcare are medical malpractice lawsuits that require doctors to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on malpractice insurance and unnecessary medical tests. Illegal aliens sponging off of the American taxpayer and health providers, causing long waits and emergency room closures, are not something we should be paying for in our healthcare costs.

If Congress really wants to work for the people, then why don't they start working on legislation to bring reform of the legal industry? Instead of grabbing control of doctors and healthcare providers, they should be clamping down on lawyers. But tort reform is never mentioned in the Democrats' bill, and Pelosi won't allow Republicans to submit any amendments to the bill or even be privy to committee hearings on it. There is no democracy in Pelosi's House.

This Congress will not consider practical free market measures to reduce the costs of healthcare because practical methods of cost reduction will not increase government power over the people. They want the people more dependent upon them, not less. They want more access to your money to buy more votes, not less.

Any time you give the government more power, you take that power away from yourself and your state. You sacrifice more freedom for more bureaucracy. This government isn't interested in reducing healthcare costs — only in finding new ways for you to pay for it.

So the people have taken their objections to the townhall meetings during this August recess. It seems to be the only way they can get our elected representatives to listen to them. Obama and his minions have called them "racists," "protesters," "right wing fringe," "mobs," and "disrupters" for making their feelings known. These people are not "disrupting" the townhall meetings, they ARE the townhall meetings and they want to be heard for once in their lives.

Now Obama is on the defense, accusing critics of lying about what is in the bill. In many cases, it is Obama who is either lying or is seriously uninformed on the bill's contents. In other cases, claims that he cites are not specifically in the bill but are the incontrovertible and inevitable result of things that are in the bill.

Diminished care for the elderly, taxpayer paid abortion, rationing of healthcare, loss of private health insurance, etc. are things that will result from the bill whether they are specified or not. That makes it easy for Obama to say: "It's not in the bill." But it's still a lie and the consequences are the same.

The only way Obamacare can work economically without raising huge deficits is if all of the money that now goes to private insurance plans goes instead to the government, and then some more to cover those who don't pay into private health plans. This is how Obama sees nationalized healthcare in America and why it must lead to the demise of all private health insurance providers. Obamacare cannot share the revenue with private insurance companies. There just isn't enough money to go around.

Government run Medicare has turned into a now unfunded disaster. Medicare might not be in such fiscal trouble if a big chunk of the money weren't going to finance the power scooter and mobility char industry. Why isn't Medicare limited to basic medical care? Can you imagine what would happen under Obamacare? We would be paying for Obamobiles from Government Motors so that the sick would have transportation to the doctor — six months after they have recovered.

Congress doesn't want this healthcare plan for themselves. They know what a pile of crap it is as well as an invasion into your privacy and your bank account. To be sure that they are insulated from the plan, they have even written into it a provision that exempts them from taking part in it.

Even Obama has refused to include himself and his family in this Obamanation of healthcare, but rallies his supporters by email to report to the White House, anyone who tries to expose the truth about this plan. Since conservative media has exposed this dangerous tactic, flag@whitehouse.gov has been shut down but the snitch White House website is still up and accepting emails from Obama snitches.

This is the most bizarre presidency and corrupt government I have ever seen in my life. I suspect it is going to prove to be the most disastrous presidency ever in the history of our country — not only for the country but for Obama and the Democrat Party as well.

As fast as Obama is destroying the country, and with it, the Democrat Party, he is destined to become a lame duck as early as the 2010 elections. Let's just hope that a Republican Congress will do a better job and be just as gracious, bipartisan, and compromising as the Democrats have been.

© JR Dieckmann