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Wednesday, April 28, 2010

DENNIS PATRICK: OBAMACARE CONSEQUENCES—UNINTENDED AND OTHERWISE

A type of unintended consequence occurs when a law or regulation is established with the intent of promoting some good or positive result -- and then backfires. The unintended consequence is contrary to the end for which it was created. Sometimes they’re humorous; sometimes they’re serious. But, at no time are they intentional.

 

On the other hand, intended consequences, if malicious, are sinister for the harm they inflict. Malevolent intent created by government demands confronting the unthinkable.

 

The new federal health care law contains both unintended and intended consequences. What the senators and congressmen hawked at home is at odds with what they produced in Washington.

 

-This legislation was to insure 32 million additional people. It won’t. The federal government is broke.

 

-We were promised everyone would keep their health insurance. They won’t. People privately insured by their employers will be driven into the public option when their employers can’t afford the increased premiums covering pre-existing conditions.

 

-A doctor shortage exists and it will get worse. An additional 32 million people will strain the public option. Add to that strain the baby boomers and the illegal immigrants.

 

-Compounding the doctor shortage, the so-called “doctor fix” that would revise the Sustainable Growth Rate reimbursement calculation was not addressed in the final bill. This forces physicians to stop seeing patients, or stop practicing altogether.

-When congress inadvertently omitted its own Cadillac health care plan from the law, they looked like the Keystone Kops scrambling for a fix.

 

All of these and others might be labeled unintended consequences. The silent intent, however, had nothing to do with health care. The intent was to move one-sixth of the US economy comprising the health care industry from the private sector to government control.

 

Intended consequences forced other large segments of the economy under federal control. These include the takeover of GM and Chrysler, the co-opting of the American Medical Association and the pharmaceutical industry to support health care legislation, the takeover of the mortgage industry, the nationalizing of the student loan programs and more. Approximately 25% of the previous private sector is now controlled by the feds.

 

In Obama’s drive to consolidate power, we’re witnessing the crippling of the financial industry. Behind the populist push in congress to take down Goldman Sachs, the Restoring America’s Financial Stability Act (S.3217) will further remove America’s financial strength from the private sector and place it under strict federal control.

 

Several previous Goldman Sachs executives were co-opted by bringing them into the federal government. Strangely, not a word is mentioned about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the original cause of America’s financial woes. If there had been no Fannie and Freddie there would have been no “financial crisis.”

 

Another chapter is in the making with the pending cap and trade legislation. Cap and trade is not about energy independence. It has everything to do with the detailed regulatory control by the federal government of every business and individual that produces or uses carbon fuel. For example, buried in the bill is a requirement that every house sold in the US must be brought up to strict federal environmental and energy standards at the sellers expense.

 

We’re watching the remaking of America in the image of a closed society by the radical left in the White House and congress. The intended consequences produce tighter federal control over American lives and punishes those who dissent. Through a series of manufactured crises, control is imposed by ever-increasing non-elected bureaucrat regulation (FBI, IRS, ATF, EPA, USDA, HHS, SEC), not by legislation.

 

The intended consequences require everyone to eventually turn to the federal government for all needs, the opposite of limited government. Where once we had private options to choose from, we’ll soon have only the federal option requiring compliance, or fines and jail.

 

In its simplest form, politics is the exercise of power and control with all its intended consequences. While there is a reluctance to confront the unthinkable, we are witnessing the rapid consolidation of power at the federal level.

 

How fragile is our constitutional republic? Limited government with its freedom must never be taken for granted because America is always one generation from extinction. Large expansive governments always turn out the same way, and the intended consequences are never pretty.

 

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at P. O. Box 337, Stanley, ND 58784 or (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Click here to email your elected representatives.

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