4:25AM
Overleveraging American Foreign and Domestic Policy

Conservative voices are being raised against what defense hawks consider to be the Democrats' ulterior motive in addressing healthcare in America: a none-too-subtle longterm plot to curtail U.S. defense spending and thus render our military forces as strategically impotent as those of our NATO allies. This charge is at once hypocritical and correct, but not for the dark reasons ascribed to the Obama administration.
Reader Comments (4)
Regardless, the lefty dems have always wanted a damn NHS style system since Roosevelt!...at least a French state insurance system...and that is why a lot of the criticism on the current Senate bill is legit...but yes, there is hypocrisy on the Republican side.
One point - "Controlling healthcare costs" is a canard. Neither party proposes anything resembling a plan which is capable of doing such. Dems propose shifting the burden from the service-user to any-and-all who pay taxes, while Reps propose ... well it's sort of unclear and it doesn't matter because it won't pass. The *costs* of healthcare will continue to rise, however. Now it'll just be another monster entitlement program. ...Unless the Dems have proposed implementing wage and price controls, shattering IP laws (or co-opting the drug companies) and I somehow missed it.
Proposals which truly speak toward *costs* - tort reform, unwinding the various codified doctors' guilds, and pushing more cost onto the consumer of the service in a direct (fee) rather than indirect (tax) basis, rightly or wrongly, aren't really on the table.
Ultimately, however, the creation of another entitlement program will only further over-leverage us and hamstring our future commitments to anything - including protecting the global system we've so eagerly propagated. Our leaders need to choose their next financial moves wisely because despite everyone's high interest in keeping this fiat-system going, we're increasingly poorly positioned in the unlikely eventuality that it stops.
I'm resigned to paying more taxes, but I sure am not going willingly unless there's some clear-thinking and some clear-talking on this from both the Administration and particularly Congress. After all, -Congress- has the Constitutional power of the purse, so they can't dodge that delegated responsibility (at least not in my mind...) But I don't have much faith that either side of the aisle really wants to tackle the hard fiscal problems and the bad choices they bring out. We might see a replay of the California debacle in a couple of years.
And none of the above will be cheap for the taxpayer . . Congress, on the other hand, will do whatever it takes to retain the power status quo it enjoys . . currently, doing nothing would be better than the options given on most of the above agendas . . especially the Health Insurance imbroglio.