Game Changer? Rep. Paul Ryan on health-care reform :: Political News and commentaries

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January 13, 2010

Game Changer? Rep. Paul Ryan on health-care reform

Earlier today, Ed Morrissey spoke with Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) about ObamaCare and efforts on the Hill to find enough votes to push it out of Congress. In his piece at Hot Air, Ed notes that Ryan wrote a separate health-care reform bill that was suppressed by the Democrats in the House, one that would have used free-market reforms to actually lower costs and allow for greater freedom of choice for Americans (instead of using anti-free market approaches that increase costs, decrease freedom of choice, and reduces benefits - as is the case with Obamacare).

As Ed points out and what is particularly noteworthy, Rep. Ryan asserts that the real ambition behind ObamaCare is not to improve health care or lower its costs, but to make Americans a dependent class and radically change the relationship between a free people and the government that is supposed to serve them, rather than the other way around:

Ed also notes:

In support of Ryan's assertion, note that the federal government will be paying subsidies to over 60% of Americans as part of the ObamaCare system. That makes for a very, very large dependent class, one that will start voting to protect its welfare payments rather than challenge the power of the federal nannies that provide it. It's an entree into autocracy, and eventually serfdom.

Interestingly, back in November 09 Joseph C. Phillips warned of essentially the same thing over at Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood, he just wrote it in a different context - that of the Dem's claim of health care being a moral imperative:

As reported in the Wall Street Journal, John Cassidy of the New Yorker lets the cat out of the bag when he writes on The New Yorker website that we must be clear about what the reform amounts to. "The U.S. government is making a costly and open-ended commitment," Cassidy writes. "The Obama Administration . . . is creating a new entitlement program, which, once established, will be virtually impossible to rescind." And why are they doing it? Again the WSJ quotes Cassidy: Because "ObamaCare serves the twin goals of making the United States a more equitable country" and furthering the Democrats' "political calculus." In other words, the purpose is to further redistribute income by putting health care further under government control, and in the process making the middle class more dependent on government. As the party of government, Democrats will benefit over the long run."

That might explain why this massive 2000 page bill uses the command "shall"- business "shall" do this, you "shall" do that -- 3,345 times; creates 111 new government boards, commissions and bureaucracies all overseen by a healthcare czar and subjects every aspect of healthcare to government regulation; all this at a whopping cost to taxpayers of $1.5 trillion over 10 years, which will be paid for through a host of new taxes, penalties and fees. In spite of rumors to the contrary; there is no free lunch.

All of which boils down to Obamacare resulting in wealth redistribution, extension and creation of dependency upon government, reduced health care benefits at greater cost, control over the population and their vote, greatly increased control over our everyday lives, and stripping us of our freedom and individuality.

That, indeed, is a game changer of the wrong kind. Unlike Obamacare, Paul Ryan's kind of reform would have taken us in the right direction.

Posted by Richard at January 13, 2010 1:24 PM

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