It’s 1993 all over again—and this time there are more of them

The American people are facing the greatest threat to our fundamental freedom that we have ever faced. The Democrats’ plan to nationalize healthcare involves, among other things, requiring small businesses to pay for the health insurance of their employees, and fining them mightily if they don’t pay, which in turn would produce an enormous disincentive to the hiring of new employees (Michael Tanner discusses it in the New York Post); prohibiting individuals from purchasing a new private health insurance plan or changing to a new one (as pointed out in the Investors Business Daily editorial I posted this morning); creating a state health insurance plan that will drive private insurance companies out of business and force more and more people to go on the state insurance plan, which will deprived them of substantial control over their choice of doctors and care (see Robert Moffit in the Post); a massive increase in taxes, particularly on well-to-do individuals and small businesses; and a crushingly complex government bureaucratic structure (see the pdf) controlling every aspect of the provision and financing of health care, an industry that takes up one-sixth of the U.S. economy.

As I said of the Clinton healthcare plan in 1993 and 1994, if this thing passes, we’re no longer a free country. And there will be no escape, no return, short of revolution or the destruction of the United States.

Oh, and by the way, whence cometh Congress’ constitutional power to do all these things? Almost no one asked that question in 1993-94, and almost no one is asking it now.

In 1994, when Democrats controlled both Houses of Congress, the nightmare Clinton bill was stopped, in part because enough of the country began to grasp the nature of the proposed law and turned against it. Surely the Obama bill can be stopped as well, though, because of larger Democratic majorities in both houses than in 1994, it will be harder.

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Ben W. writes:

LA: “And there will be no escape, no return, short of revolution or the destruction of the United States”

Would you say that:

(1) Obama has passed way beyond anything you suspected his liberalism capable of before his election,

(2) He is behaving just as predicted prior to his election,

(3) He has not been as liberal as predicted and is really a centrist?

LA replies:

We knew he would go for nationalized healthcare, that was the one certainty, wasn’t it? But that wasn’t new, we had faced that with the Clintons. So we knew we would have to stop it or die, just as we had to stop it or die in 93-‘94. It’s also the case that ANY Democratic president will seek to nationalize healthcare. We cannot expect never to have a Democratic president, especially when the Republicans/conservatives spend eight years selling out whatever principles they may have had for the sake of a liberal-leaning Republican president. So there is no avoidance of these battles.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 16, 2009 09:01 PM | Send