In yesterday's Wall Street Journal, John Fund makes two points:
1) Several ideas are being floated as to how to raise the funds to pay for nationalized health care. They all deal with taxes on things like those making over $100,000 (what happened to the campaign's $250,000), or those whose benefits are above a certain cap would be taxed. However, one groups health benefits will not be taxed.....unions!
2) Also, there will be folks who will be excluded from being in the universal health care. They'll be allowed to keep their Cadillac/Lexus/Mercedes version. Those folks will be.....drum roll....members of Congress.
There's a reason the Obama health care plan is being rushed through
Congress this summer -- because the American people would likely never
support it if given time to absorb and understand such fine print. If
the union carve-out isn't sufficient to excite public anger, wait till
you hear about the version of the Obama plan prepared by Senator Edward
Kennedy, which would specifically exempt Members of Congress from many
of its provisions.
As the U.S. Office of Personnel Management notes, Members of
Congress "enjoy the widest selection of health plans in the country."
According to page 114 of the Kennedy bill, a similar array of choices
would not be available to other Americans in the future. Instead, they
would be shunted into health insurance plans under the straightjacket
of whatever the government decides is a "basic" plan.
The goal would be to restrict care for the general public in order
to control costs, while making sure Congress gets the gold-plated
attention it's accustomed to. Ultimately, the rest of us would be asked
to trade a private insurance company as gatekeeper for a government
gatekeeper. The difference, of course, is that most of us can fire our
insurance gatekeeper. Just try to do that once the government fills
that role.
On this 2nd point, I'm with Rush Limbaugh on this one.
So
the question that needs to be asked, the only question, really, you
need to call your senator and your member of Congress and you need to
ask them very simply: Are you going to opt out and forego your current
health care plan in order to join the health are plan provided for most
Americans by the Obama government? And what do you think the answer
you're going to get is? The answer's: Hell, no, I'm not giving up my
health care plan, but we can't provide this kind of health coverage for
every American. So members of Congress and the Obama Administration
will not be subjected to the health care plan they are going to come up
with.
Folks,I implore you -- and I don't do this often, I seldom do this. But Iwant you to ask your senators and your member of Congress, point-blank:
"Are you going to opt out on the healthcare plan you have to join the
public option health plan you are going to write for the rest of us?"
Don't accept anything other than a yes or no answer. They'll try to
obfuscate. "Well, you know, our plan is only for five or six hundred
people. It's much easier to manage. We're talking about 47 million
uninsured Americans," blah, blah, blah.
No. If it's a good
plan, it's a good plan. If they're going to come up with the best plan
for us, it's the best plan for them. They work for us. It's very
simple: Are you going to opt out on your great healthcare plan and join
the public option you're going to write? That's the only question that
needs to be asked about any of this.
Call them. Over and over again, if that's what it takes. Tell them that if this healthcare is not good enough for them, it's not good enough for us. And if they vote for it with those clauses in there, we'll be voting them out of there.
-Colonel Steve
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