WHO IS GOING TO TAKE CARE OF ME?

 In one of the first couple of debates between President Obama and John McCain the question was asked if health care was a right or a responsibility. The answer to that question was all I needed to see the difference between Liberal and Conservative, Obama said, “right,” McCain, “responsibility.”

President Obama stated prior to his election in 2008, true to his belief, that he wanted single payer health care for the country, because he believes that is the only way to insure the human “right” of health care.  A right, commensurate with Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, and he would get it for the peeps in his first term. 

This Liberal belief that health care is a right, obligates the government to insure that health care happens for all of its citizens --enter Obamacare.    Liberals come to the “health care as a right” belief from the original Bill Of Rights entry, Pursuit of Happiness. Their conclusion, as stated by a prominent Liberal talk show host, is how can people be happy if they are in bad health? So, in order for the government to fulfill the Pursuit of Happiness right they must provide health care.  Of course, how can the sheeples be happy and healthy if they are hungry? “Government “free” food? It’s hard to be healthy and happy without an adequate home –“free” housing?  How can a person be happy without an education (they will need the required knowledge to fill out the paperwork for all the other free stuff that will make them happy)—“free” education? Those rights, of course, could be obtained by the folks themselves if they had jobs, but requiring work for the “happiness” stuff is, I realize, a last ditch option.

One political view is for the government to get out of the way and let the folks PURSUE happiness. The other view is for the government to step in and PROVIDE happiness. I will let you determine which political philosophy is which.

As a Conservative I guess I can feel good that I’m not going to be around for this Liberal philosophy’s logical conclusion which is redistribution to the point where half the population is paying for the free stuff of the other half. Wait, I just heard that today more people are receiving government assistance than are working. Guess I am around for it.

This fight over Obamacare is very important for both political sides because it addresses what philosophy will define the United States for the next few generations. Not to be overly dramatic, but it’s a fight for the soul, the essence of who we are as a country.   How much government is too much? At what point are the citizens of the US officially declared incompetent to care for themselves? That competence/incompetence line is the line between left and right. It is a Liberal/Conservative tug-o-war.

 The current discussion over Obamacare is important because it is representative of the core difference between Liberals and Conservatives.  After three years of  being told individuals would not lose their plans (while the Federal Register from 2010 show this not to be true), this administration  finally admitted that many people are going to lose their current healthcare plans because, in the minds of the government, the insurance plans of a great many of the unwashed masses were not good enough. I heard a panelist on MSNBC completely befuddled at why people would be upset at having the government replace their “substandard” plan with one that covered more issues (like pregnancy for 70 year old men and Viagra for 70 year old women). She didn’t get it. Since she is of the political ilk that holds the belief that the government, as a whole, knows better than any individual, she never will get it. These people who are being forced out of their plan were satisfied with what they had! They bought their policy using their own brains, they were willing to live and die by their decision and it satisfied them, but apparently these personal choices didn’t satisfy the government.

I thought the stated objective of Obamacare was to provide insurance for those folks who did not currently have insurance, whether they wanted insurance or not. I didn’t think the objective was to take away insurance people had and replace it with plans the dull population didn’t know they needed. I was naive. I forgot the single payer end game.

I’m sure Obamacare will overcome all of its many start-up problems and because its concept is to take from the few and give to the many, the many will be happy with it, so within maybe five years it will rank up there with other Liberal successful yet unsustainable programs like Medicare and Social Security and the ‘fundamental transformation” of the country will be almost complete.