Quote:
Originally Posted by PaulS
BC, it was HIS admin. who provided that intelligence for congress to vote on.
Sort of like it was Obama's admin. who must therefor have been responsible for the bad intelligence regarding the threat to our embassy in Benghazi.
Again, I'll ask -don't you think people are more justified about getting us into a war based on bad intelligence (and I think it went beyond that to some lies and some ignoring anything that didn't fit in w/the what the admin. wanted) and trying to provide health insur. for people who don't have it?
|
Hmmm. Comparing war to health insurance. Yeah . . . I can see some similarities. Winning a war would probably insure better health for the victors than the losers. On the other hand, abandoning the victory and letting enemies gain strength would probably threaten one's health.
But there is also another type of health that is affected by the innocent sounding "trying to provide health insur. for people who don't have it". The nature and method of the attempt was not just getting some uninsured folks insurance, but transforming the whole health care process for everybody, and creating a whole new power for government, enabling it for the first time to tax the people for not buying something. In other words, fundamentally changing the relationship of the individual to the government. And in such a way that it would have absolute power over the people rather being limited to power consented by the people. Now here, indeed, there might be a closer comparison to war. Rather than some admirable little attempt to get some folks insured, it turned out to be a war against liberty in the name of good.
I suppose there might also be a comparison with the nature of the "intelligence" gathered to justify a particular war or a particular health insurance. You believe that the intelligence used to justify the Iraq war was bad. And even manipulated to make it even more justifiable. So, then, how about the validity or truth of the "intelligence" justifying this insurance? Does the name Jonathan Gruber ring a bell. Were the lies told about what the ACA really was and how it worked and what its impact would be comparable to the lies that you imply the Bush administration told?
And how about a comparison of the results of the war and the insurance.
Yup. Thousands died and were maimed in Iraq. That is the nature of war. And justifying an offensive war to a free people, certainly to the people of this country, has always required some manipulation. Starting with the American revolution and with every offensive war we entered after, there was always needed some "twisting" or creating of facts and necessities. I'm not going to judge that here, though you probably do. It is hard to tell what was achieved with victory in Iraq, since we've tossed the victory out. Briefly, there was a retrenchment of the bad guys and the possibility of the growth of a more Western type of secular government, if we had stayed.
The ACA was supposedly for the purpose, as you say, of getting some people who had none, insured. That is, apparently happening. But the need for that was, supposedly, to take the burden off of the rest of us who were paying for the health care those same people were getting without insurance. And the rest of us would still, then, be able to keep the insurance we had, but with the lowered costs due to not having to pay for the other uninsureds. As it turns out, we indeed will still be paying for the previously uninsured, at an even higher rate than before. And in the process, we have become vulnerable, in a way never before imagined, to some further government demand that we must buy what it considers a necessity, or be taxed if we don't. It all may not seem to be much of a price to pay to get a few folks who could not afford insurance great health care, but it is huge in the annals of American individual freedom.
It is, of course, a huge step into socialism. Added to the other steps we've been taking. The problem of insurance for the few who didn't have it but deserved assistance could have been provided in a far less intrusive and liberty destroying way.