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Peggy Noonan Speaks the Unspoken About the Coming Health Nazis....if Obama Gets His Way

She writes a good piece noting why ObamaCare is sinking fast, and it isn't because of Washington game-playing.

It is bad enough having political elitists with the cocky Obamesque self-assurance that they know what's best for all of us.

Worse that they are shoving their gargantuan economy-killing cure-all agenda down the country's collective throat.

But even worse is what this portends for all of us should Americans' health and health care become inalterably subject to the whims of the ilk that would use the force of state to dictate our day-to-day lives in the name of collective "health".

"We are living in a time in which educated people who are at the top of American life feel they have the right to make very public criticisms of . . . let’s call it the private, pleasurable but health-related choices of others. They shame smokers and the overweight. Drinking will be next. Mr. Obama’s own choice for surgeon general has come under criticism as too heavy.

Only a generation ago such criticisms would have been considered rude and unacceptable. But they are part of the ugly, chafing price of having the government in something: Suddenly it can make big and very personal demands on you.

Those who live in a way that isn’t sufficiently healthy “cost us money” and “drive up premiums.” Mr. Obama himself said something like it in his press conference, when he spoke of a person who might not buy health insurance. If he gets hit by a bus, “the rest of us have to pay for it.”

Under a national health-care plan we might be hearing that a lot. You don’t exercise, you smoke, you drink, you eat too much, and “the rest of us have to pay for it.”

It is a new opportunity for new class professionals (an old phrase that should make a comeback) to shame others, which appears to be one of their hobbies. (It may even be one of their addictions. Let’s stage an intervention.) Every time I hear Kathleen Sebelius talk about “transitioning” from “treating disease” to “preventing disease,” I start thinking of how they’ll use this as an excuse to judge, shame and intrude.

So this might be an unarticulated public fear: When everyone pays for the same health-care system, the overseers will feel more and more a right to tell you how to live, which simple joys are allowed and which are not.

Americans in the most personal, daily ways feel they are less free than they used to be. And they are right, they are less free.

Who wants more of that?"

Comments

Anonymous said…
The healthcare debate always reminds me of one of my favorite C.S. Lewis quotes:

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

It is just as pertinent on the right as it is to the left.
Delaware Watch said…
That's right, Tyler. Let's continue to have 48 million people, MOSTLY CHILDREN, w/o health insurance and TWICE that number under-insured w/o all the attendant bankruptcies and needless deaths simply because you and and a few other emotionally fragile people can't abide hearing the sound and unimpeachable advice, say, in a commercial that smoking is bad for your health.

If you don't care about all those millions of Americans, then why no just say so instead of passing off Noonan's pompous drivel as incising commentary. You offend intellectually w/ this tripe.
tom said…
Apparently you weren't paying attention when the Census Bureau pointed out that of those alleged "48 million people, MOSTLY CHILDREN, w/o health insurance" (although they said 46 million) 9.7 million, or about 21% of the uninsured, are illegal aliens. Another 17 million uninsured Americans come from households with an annual income of greater than $50,000; another 7 million have incomes of $75,000 per year.

So regardless of whether or not I am one of those heartless libertarians who want to deny health care to children, 70% of those uninsured children either have no excuse for health care at taxpayer expense, or are uninsured because their parents who could afford it had different priorities.
Anonymous said…
Liberterians are buying into the 1% controlling the 99%. You gotta love this republican garbage. Obama care is Nazi care. Did you miss the Rabbis stealing Palestinan kidneys and sending them to the rich around the world? I would say that is Nazi health care!

I guess you would rather have some immoral bean counter willing to shut down your doctor and their treatment program, so the bastard can collect a commisson. You have no clue what the system created by Richard Nixon has evolved into.

In fact there are more than 47 million now without health care, all those poor bastards who lost their jobs to overseas countries with single payer or no health care at all.

Go to RAMUSA.com and see how a group of volunteer nurses/doctors/dentists/ are delivering health care in a "mash unit" in Wise Country Va this weekend. This non profit, volunteer group have made 575 "expeditions" throughout the US to rural areas of america. They are met with thousands of women, men and children who are desperate for health care.

How many of you would deny health care to the poor and the working class? It appears your republican bent is all too close to your "small government" mentality. If you think you can win on this issue the liberaterians have sunk lower than the republican right wing who you claim to despise.
Bad Economy said…
In Canada we are facing the same issues you are about to face. If I cannot prove I have exercised enough, I will have to pay a surcharge on my insurance premiums.

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