Republicans shouldn’t complain about ObamaCare

May 10th, 2010 | by Brian Schwartz |

In March Michael Cannon at Cato delivered a half-hour speech the policy implications of ObamaCare (HR 3590) and the best ways to fight it. In this post I want to highlight a two-minute segment (starts at 27:30) what he says about Republicans:

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Cannon concludes:

Republicans’ objections to the substance of the Obama health plan and the process were weakened their past behavior, Democrats knew it and they exploited it. … If you endorse a new government mandate, or a subsidy, or a regulation today, your opponents will make it a law tomorrow.  If today you withhold material from the American people or play shell games with the federal budget or abuse Congressional rules, your opponents will do the same thing tomorrow. Whatever you do today, your opponents will do it to you, tomorrow. And you should behave accordingly.

Cannon’s list of how Republicans have supported parts of ObamaCare or are guilty of the shifty political maneuvers behind it: * “A Republican President endorsed an employer health insurance mandate in the 1970s”

  1. “Conservative Republicans and think tanks endorsed an individual mandate in their alternatives to the Clinton health plan …”
  2. Republicans were in power for years and showed little interest in restraining government or the deficit, passed tax cuts that did not reduce the size of government and created entitlements that expanded federal spending and deficits
  3. “The suppressed valid cost estimates of their entitlement programs…”
  4. “They abused the legislative process by holding the vote open on that Medicare Part D entitlement program for three hours in the House of Representatives rather than the traditional 15 minutes so they could change the outcome of the vote.”
  5. “Many Republicans express sympathy of the price controls in the Obama plan…”
  6. “A Republican governor & conservative think tank enacted the Obama Plan in Massachusetts in 2006…”

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  • Of course ObamaCare will prove to be problematic and create (most likely, like technological advances also) just as many problems as it may intend to address. It's the nature of problems for which we have no pragmatic solutions, and in the eyes of many means that we really do not have a health care issue / problem.

    However, to the extent that either side of the aisle has an interest in improving the health of citizens through any means possible, it is necessary to recognize two very fundamental issues:

    1) The politicalization of the issue, or utilization of an ideological approach, will not result in an effective solution, because most human beings are not sufficiently self-motivated to pursue optimal health. It's just not going to happen.

    2) Because of our (minimum of) two party governmental system, ANY bill generated will be ineffective because it is a moderate, piecemeal, compromised approach to health. Imagine giving kids a vaccine which has been diluted, watered down, or adulterated with all sorts of ingredients not essential to attacking the disease.

    Why do ANYTHING if it is not going to be effective? Why waste the time and the money pursuing goals through ineffective means?

    This issue will NEVER be resolved by either side as long as people have freedom of choice. It's the nature of human beings.

    As Dirty Harry once said, "A man (or humankind) has to know his (or its) limitations.

  • wakalix
    Re. people's limits, I suggest looking at Thomas Sowell's "A Conflict of Visions" or "The Vision of the Anointed" which compares what he calls the "tragic vision" with the "anointed" vision. Here's a good summary:
    http://www.vinod.com/blog/Books/VisionoftheAnnointed.html
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