Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Will You Settle for Obamacare-lite?






Pop quiz:  When is it a good idea to free people from taking responsibility for their own needs?

Answer:  Never


The Republican plan to repeal and replace Obamacare is out there now and it doesn’t fail to disappoint this conservative.  I don’t know all of the details of what’s contained in the bill, but I know this much:  it contains “refundable tax credits” to help lower income people buy health insurance and this is unacceptable to me, as it should be to anyone who calls him/herself a conservative.

Refundable tax credits are just the Republican version of the Obamacare subsidies, which means that the great, long-awaited Republican plan leaves in place the most communistic feature of Obamacare.

From each according to his ability; to each according to his need.

Sound familiar?  That’s what a “refundable tax credit” is all about.   Taking from those who have, with or without their consent, and giving to those who don’t have.  It’s the infamous Marxist creed.  This wonderful plan looks like it has the fingerprints of Paul “Means-Testing” Ryan all over it, and that’s scary.

In the many years I’ve been blogging now I cannot tell you how many times I’ve seen the famous Margaret Thatcher quote, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money,” invoked by conservatives.   Now, I happen to think that the problem with socialism is that it’s wrong to take other peoples’ money against their will regardless of whether it runs out or not, but be that as it may it will be interesting to see how many conservatives will remember Thatcher’s words when they are called upon to support this stupid bill.

“What’s so wrong about making everyone chip in to help the “less fortunate” buy healthcare, CW?”

Let’s start with the fact that while RINOs like Paul Ryan love to talk about means-testing none of them ever talks about needs-testing.  By that I mean that all of their clever plans and schemes to help “the poor” never take into consideration the reasons some people are poor.  The failure to do so means that someone who invested four or more years and a lot of money to get a college degree so that they could enjoy a higher standard of living must now subsidize the guy who dropped out of school because he preferred doing drugs and, as a consequence, has a lower-paying job.  It means that the self-made entrepreneur who sacrificed having fun in his younger years to build a business for his family must, when his hard work finally pays off, subsidize the surfer bum who works part-time at 7-11.  It means that the young woman who resisted temptation and waited for the right man and the right time, financially, to start her family must now subsidize another young woman who made the wrong choice and became a single parent when she wasn’t prepared to take on that financial responsibility.  Isn’t it funny how the liberals that are ostensibly obsessed with “fairness” never see the unfairness in any of this?

THAT’s what’s wrong with socialism and “refundable tax credits.”  We have no say about who gets to benefit from our hard-earned tax money.

I’ll say it once again for anyone who’ll listen:  The way you “fix” the healthcare crisis is to remove artificial (i.e. government imposed) barriers to affordable healthcare so that everyone can afford to take  responsibility for themselves and their children as long as they’re willing to step up and do so.  All bets are off when you take personal responsibility out of the equation.

I know that political pundits like Charles Krauthammer, whom I usually admire, are saying that it would be political suicide for Republicans not to provide a substitute for the Obamacare subsidies because the entitlement now exists, thanks to Obama.  This was the scheme all along, of course.  But here’s my question for Dr. Krauthammer and everyone else who wants to reward this scheme:  How is it any less suicidal for Republicans – supposedly the party of liberty, the Constitution and the free market system – to become enablers of the Left’s Marxist scheme?  We win nothing by becoming the lighter version of Barack Obama, and if you gave money, as I did, to help elect or re-elect Republicans to fight the evil empire of socialism you can’t be happy with their plan.

Please contact your senators and house representatives and implore them not to vote for Obamacare-lite. 


~CW


To comment on this post please visit The Pesky Truth.  Thanks!


No comments:

Post a Comment