In George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” the pigs exert total control over the farm by passing one simple law:
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
Orwell’s novel was a devastating critique of Communism. But the Democrat party, with its totalitarian impulses no longer disguised or in check, are the new pigs, the new rulers of the post-modern American Animal Farm.
ObamaCare reduces health insurance and medical care—complex, voluntary interactions—to a one-size-fits-all system. The American people are moved around like chess pieces. This is the DNA of the left; to create a universe of dumb bureaucratic systems that impose rigid order on millions of individuals.
This is not to say that the state should never intervene. For instance, we have empirical evidence that without polio vaccines, children will get this dreaded disease. Thus, it makes sense for government to mandate vaccines.
But the empirical evidence for s state controlled health care system is that it results in second rate medical care for the majority of citizens. We need only look to Great Britain, Cuba, or the socialized medicine of the Arab world, to see quite clearly that state controlled health care does not work for a majority of citizens. Not to mention the ruinous taxes and deficits that will, eventually, bankrupt the state.
In fact, the Democrats who passed ObamaCare were well aware of the misery they were about to impose on the American people. We know this because the Democrats authored specific provisions within ObamaCare to protect themselves against ObamaCare.
Welcome to the Democrat Animal Farm.
Senator Ron Johnson (R.Wisconsin) is filing suit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin to make Congress live by the letter of the health-care law it imposed on the rest of America.
On Monday, Jan. 6, I am filing suit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin to make Congress live by the letter of the health-care law it imposed on the rest of America. By arranging for me and other members of Congress and their staffs to receive benefits intentionally ruled out by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the administration has exceeded its legal authority.
The president and his congressional supporters have also broken their promise to the American people that ObamaCare was going to be so good that they would participate in it just like everyone else. In truth, many members of Congress feel entitled to an exemption from the harsh realities of the law they helped jam down Americans’ throats in 2010. Unlike millions of their countrymen who have lost coverage and must now purchase insurance through an exchange, members and their staffs will receive an employer contribution to help pay for their new plans.
It is clear that this special treatment, via a ruling by the president’s Office of Personnel Management, was deliberately excluded in the law. During the drafting, debate and passage of ObamaCare, the issue of how the law should affect members of Congress and their staffs was repeatedly addressed. Even a cursory reading of the legislative history clearly shows the intent of Congress was to ensure that members and staff would no longer be eligible for their current coverage under the Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan.
The law states that as of Jan. 1, 2014, the only health-insurance plans that members of Congress and their staffs can be offered by the federal government are plans “created under” ObamaCare or “offered through an Exchange” established under ObamaCare.
Furthermore, allowing the federal government to make an employer contribution to help pay for insurance coverage was explicitly considered, debated and rejected. In doing so, Congress established that the only subsidy available to them would be the same income-based subsidy available to every other eligible American accessing insurance through an exchange. This was the confidence-building covenant supporters of the law made to reassure skeptics that ObamaCare would live up to its billing. They wanted to appear eager to avail themselves of the law’s benefits and be more than willing to subject themselves to the exact same rules, regulations and requirements as their constituents.
Eager, that is, until they began to understand what they had actually done to themselves. For instance, by agreeing to go through an exchange they cut themselves off from the option of paying for health care with pretax dollars, the way many Americans will continue to do through employer-supplied plans. That’s when they went running to President Obama for relief. The president supplied it via the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which issued a convoluted ruling in October 2013 that ignores the clear intent and language of the law. After groping for a pretext, OPM essentially declared the federal government a small employer—magically qualifying members of Congress for coverage through a Small Business Health Options Program, exchanges where employers can buy insurance for their employees.
Neat trick, huh? Except that in issuing the ruling, OPM exceeded its statutory jurisdiction and legal authority. In directing OPM to do so, President Obama once again chose political expediency instead of faithfully executing the law—even one of his own making. If the president wants to change the law, he needs to come to Congress to have them change it with legislation, not by presidential fiat or decree.
The legal basis for our lawsuit (which I will file with a staff member, Brooke Ericson, as the other plaintiff) includes the fact that the OPM ruling forces me, as a member of Congress, to engage in activity that I believe violates the law. It also potentially alienates members of Congress from their constituents, since those constituents are witnessing members of Congress blatantly giving themselves and their staff special treatment.
Republicans have tried to overturn this special treatment with legislation that was passed by the House on Sept. 29, but blocked in the Senate. Amendments have also been offered to Senate bills, but Majority Leader Harry Reid refuses to allow a vote on any of them.
I believe that I have not only legal standing but an obligation to go to court to overturn this unlawful executive overreach, end the injustice, and provide a long overdue check on an executive that recognizes fewer and fewer constitutional restraints.
Via the Wall Street Journal
I wonder how many laws we would have – that Congress exempted themselves from – if Congress were mandated to live by the same laws as us peons?
It was a Republican or 2 tht got this law passed. never will forget Arlen Spector, helping to pass it.
“We just can’t trust the American people to make those types of choices … Government has to make those choices for people.”
Hillary Clinton, re her healthcare plan, 1993.
Robert writes, “This is not to say that the state should never intervene. For instance, we have empirical evidence that without polio vaccines, children will get this dreaded disease. Thus, it makes sense for government to mandate vaccines.”
I disagree with government mandating vaccines. Our government has no Constitutionally allowed business mandating anything about health care. The idea that even the polio vaccination mandate was responsible for polio’s eradication is false. Consider reading https://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=348 from back in 2001. The article’s writer refers to physician Harold Buttram writing, “from 1911 to 1935 the four leading causes of childhood deaths from infectious diseases in the US were diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), scarlet fever, and measles. However, by 1945 the combined death rates from these causes had declined by 95 percent, before the implementation of mass immunization programs.” Further along this same article refers to neurosurgeon Miguel Faria writing “that between 1923-1953, before the Salk vaccine was discovered in 1955, the polio death rate in the US and England declined on its own by 47 percent and 55 percent, respectively. This is not reported or discussed by the public health establishment but, it seems, only by independent researchers; neither is the fact that European countries, which didn’t systematically immunize their citizens, also experienced a precipitous decline in their polio morbidity and mortality statistics.”
Another example of the trouble with government mandated intervention is identified in an article https://mises.org/daily/3792 from 2009. Be wary of assuming that government mandates can resolve anything in our favor. Such always has been and always will be an excuse for the camel’s nose to head for the tent. People should judge for themselves whether to vaccinate based on a variety of facts about availability, price, and effectiveness, all of which government intervention obscures or destroys.
Larry:
Thanks so much for the thoughtful, informative and compelling rebuttal. I’m wondering about your ( and zudduz’s) position on garbage collection by city government. It is clearly a public health issue. If garbage is not collected and disposed of, disease follows? Or do you believe that individuals should be wholly responsible for the collection and disposal of garbage?
I’d also like to know your position on the fluoridation of the water supply by municipal authorities.
This has been the BIG question probably since Cro-Magnon told Neanderthal ” you guys gotta leave, you’re too hairy and you smell”! It has spawned alliances, blocs, pacts, constitutions, declarations, ententes, detentes, ententes cordiales, legislation, regulation, zoning, commissions, blue ribbon panels, compromises, and last but not least that scourge of all known civilization, the Sunday TV panel discussion.
Think of it as the longest ongoing, most contentious, and most disorganized script rewrite ever.
Garbage pickup and fluoridation are long discussed issues. Neither of them require government intervention.
Anecdote: Where I live now, there is no garbage pickup. My neighbors & I each take ours in our own vehicles to a local dump where we can drop off as much as 6 yards a day if we need to. I take mine about once every 2 weeks. The price I pay for that service is itemized in my property taxes, where it can be forcibly extracted without my permission. Opening it up to businesses to supply that service would probably be more convenient to me in several ways and I’d pay for the service I want. Wouldn’t my rural quantities be about the same as city quantities, differing only in individual ways? I did live several decades in LA and until last year in Sacramento. Government garbage collection is not required.
Garbage companies would exist without government support & regulation. They would step in and provide competitive services if government did not monopolize those services. With market-satisfying services, one company that doesn’t get the job done well has to compete with another ready & willing to step in. When collectors compete, if one collector goes on strike another one will make money. Two articles for further reading on this topic are https://mises.org/daily/3698 from 2009 and https://mises.org/daily/4288/ from 2010.
Fluoridation in the municipal water supply is not the good idea it has been sold as. Consider that only children between ages 5-9 benefit from it. Yet how much water is used from that same supply for every other purpose: dishes, baths, toilets, gardens. Yet, fluoridation is expensive. It’s another example of the waste by government intervention & subsidizing. Wouldn’t it be less wasteful for parents who actually have children that age to buy the treatment for only their children’s drinking water? Such treatments exist for pets. My wife just bought one for our dog. If we didn’t have the government interfering with our medical insurance, it might even apply to our deductible as part of our children’s dental care. Consider reading the short article @ https://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=386 from 2002.
All law is violence.
If I’m allowed to say no without repercussion then it’s not a law.
If there was no government would you kick in your neighbors door and hold him down to give him a polio vaccine? I suppose many would answer yes. I cannot justify this action to myself so I cannot support a law that is in the same spirit. If it’s wrong for me to do it, then abstracting the action to a government entity doesn’t clear my guilt.
But let’s be hypothetical. What if the polio vaccine only kept people from becoming contagious but if someone was vaccinated and then exposed to polio they would still become susceptible to it. Now my neighbors refusal to take the vaccine represents a threat to me and my family.
I would argue for forcing him to take the vaccine or kicking him out of town. I would feel similar about him keeping a large amount of dry brush in his backyard that is likely to catch on fire and threaten my home with that same fire.
Please excuse me for having only a Christian perspective on Jewish law but if I recall correctly health regulations for infectious skin diseases were relayed by Moses. Do you think any of that applies to the question up for discussion?
I strongly disagree regarding legally requiring a polio vaccine. If a parent wishes to keep their child safe from polio they are free to get them vaccinated and don’t need the government to intervene on their behalf.
zudduz:I am sympathetic to your view.
It would be nice if Johnson’s suit would be heard but I’m afraid the courts will say he doesn’t have standing. Which is a shame since what he says is all true.
If Democrats were honest they would recognize that the U.S. under Obama is resembling the Soviet Union more and more. I’ll bet the members of the Politburo and their staffers had the best health care Moscow could provide.
No one complained about income inequality under Mao or Brezhnev. When 99.9999999999% of the population is dirt poor people wish there was some income inequality.
Johnny:
When you write “If Democrats were honest” I actually broke out in laughter.