The Europeanization of America

Among this morning's headlines on the website of the Detroit Free Press was an article about how the Democrats are willing to go on their own and attempt to set in place some type of national health care. They cite polls which support the idea.

I do not know all the details of their scheme other than that it would include government health care plans which might be purchased by middle class families. These plans would be set up alongside current private health care insurance.

But in the end, exactly what type of plan gets put into place won't matter. What will matter in the long run will be that we will have taken another step towards losing our identity as free people. We will have given over to the government one more reign of power over our lives. We will become, eventually, like Europe, where under the guise of helping everyone the middle class will simply demand more and more for itself in terms of entitlements.

The trouble with this approach, in part at least, is that it presumes that the money to fund such endeavors will always be available. It doesn't take into account things which Europe didn't take into account years ago when it set itself along this path: social programs of a magnitude such as national health care only work so long as there are people adding wealth to the economy to fund them. When people start taking more from the system than the system can provide, when they begin taking what isn't automatically theirs, the system must implode.

Or worse, and that generally is the case. The worst is exactly what we see in Canada and Europe: increasing government control of doctors and hospitals and the rationing of health care, or short cuts in its treatment. One of my Canadian friends had no option but to walk with a brace for several years rather than get the knee surgery which would have taken care of the problem more quickly. Why? Because the money wasn't there for the operation. Because when the government controls health care it ultimately controls who gets what out of it.

That is not a scheme which respects humanity or human rights. It is a scheme which makes people into the playthings of those in charge. We become the rag dolls of the government, who alone will dress us and feed us and care for us.

We do not want Washington to have that kind of power over our lives. Yet it is where we are headed if we don't get straight on what it should and should not do for us. Flawed though it may be, we must remember that nothing made by human hands and minds is perfect. Yet it is only by leaving choice to the people, especially in the critical areas of life, that we leave the power to them.