Health Care Bill Promises Us a Nightmare

For the last several days I've been reviewing HR 3200, the House version of the health care bill that will likely become the framework for whatever emerges from Congress next month.

I know when you say the words "health care reform" people's eyes glaze over. With good reason. The details are eye-glazing stuff.

I was sent a lengthy list of some of its provisions by people who have actually read the whole thing. No small task. It requires you to thumb back and forth through the various sections and, if you are not a health care professional AND an attorney, it's difficult reading. I've had to do quite a bit of research just to understand some of the terms employed. It's an ugly read, but an important one.

After extensive reading, I have come to several conclusions, some of which I will share here. Others I will post shortly.

For anyone who believes that personal liberty trumps the needs of the collective, HR 3200 is a nightmare knocking at the door. It's Edgar Allen Poe answering the call of the "raven."

Or maybe that's not the right analogy. Maybe it's like Frankenstein's Monster, breaking his chains and rampaging out of the laboratory, ready to terrify the surrounding populace.

That's not quite right either. It has elements of Bram Stoker's Dracula, in that an ancient evil -- Marxism -- has invited itself over to a new country, the formerly freedom-loving United States, to suck the life-blood out of our economy and our people.

Health care reform as it is coming, unless we rise up and demand that our elected officials stop it, has elements of all of these things, and more.

It literally is a matter of life and death. HR 3200 hands over that power to the State.

When health care is run by the state, you have no other recourse than to rely on the state to determine who gets health care and who does not. In other words, who lives, and who dies. Who suffers and who is treated.

And there is no higher authority to whom you can appeal. The federal government cannot be sued for decisions made in the normal exercise of its authority.

You will still be able to sue your physician, or dentist, or the guy who administers your anesthesia. The trial lawyers, at least in the short term, have no need to fear HR 3200.

But, you will not be able to sue the "administrator" who determines that your prescribed medical treatment cannot be allowed because you are no longer a net benefit to society, and therefore not worth the cost to society of giving it to you. He is, after all, only helping you understand the regulations.

Whether you are allowed to stay on your private insurance plan or not, health care will be tightly regulated by the government. Unless you are remarkably healthy, there will be moments in your life in which your well being will be determined by "administrators" and "bureaucrats" who will be interpreting mounds of rules and regulations, which will change constantly as is the norm with all bureaucracies.

It is not clear to me whether you will have the right to spend your own money on health care not covered by "the system." I suspect that if a loophole does exist, it will be closed.

Whether or not you like horror movies, I guarantee you that you will not like Government Health Care and Government Health Insurance, which are one and the same thing.

You will mourn your loss of freedom. You will struggle under the increase in taxes and fees.

You will be angry as our economy collapses into a permanent state of depression, with the government emerging as the main player in regulating jobs and professions.

And there will be almost nothing, at that point, that you can do about it.

I challenge you to do your own research. Read the bill. Listen to what the defenders of health care reform are saying, but verify if they are telling the truth. Listen to the opponents of health care reform, but verify.

I think your eyes will be opened.

It is not yet too late.