“You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that, it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” – Rahm Emanuel
Americans are racing down the road to total government-run health care. COVID-19 greased the roads.
How bureaucrats and activist politicians managed COVID-19 from its start has prepared us for the final push into total government-run health care in the United States of America. COVID-19 “experts” conditioned most of us to accept government’s authority over how we live and respond to protecting our health — it led hundreds of thousands to needless death.
With today’s technology, health care distribution managed by the federal government will end individual liberty, leaving us free only to do what governments have approved. Politicians pursuing power know fear of suffering and death motivate voters to barter their liberty in exchange for health.
COVID-19 provided the perfect crisis to increase and centralize political power and to raise taxes. The formula is obvious and highly successful. Fan the flames of fear. Demand bold interventions. Audaciously intrude on individual liberty. Stick to the public health dictates despite credible and voluminous medical and scientific opposition. Establish stringent rules and regulations that force people to change long-established habits and attitudes. Then constantly gaslight the people by denigrating disagreeing experts, and feed misinformation through a willing media.
COVID-19 opened the window so we could better see how a federal government-run health care system will work. We have seen a health distribution system that gives politicians and bureaucrats power to decide matters of economic and physical life and death.
We have learned a great deal about how a government-run, federalized health system would work in the U.S.A. We have witnessed the devastation caused by a centralized, “expert-driven” approach to COVID-19. We have seen manipulation of the COVID-19 threat to extract enormous amounts of taxpayer money that put our country in debt — maybe into bankruptcy and made tens of millions more dependent on government.
Ten steps closer to socialized medicine
- Start with the peoples’ strong belief in the experts at the Centers for Disease Control to provide definitive answers and provide avenues to save us.
- Witness the breathtaking speed at which the federal government commanded how people must live using the most astonishing demonstration of raw government power we have experienced.
- Mandate lockdowns, facemasks, “social” distancing, and vaccinations, a demonstration of governments’ incredible encroachment on liberty.
- Intimidate, penalize, marginalize, and destroy those who challenge governments’ edicts.
- Forbid medical professionals from practicing medicine as they know it. Force them to submit to federal edicts that dictated their medical decisions.
- When the narrative doesn’t fit the federal story, force physicians to enter phony cause of death data on death certificates, further fanning the flames of fear.
- Expect state governors and their health-system bureaucrats and medical providers to take their orders from unelected federal officials who decreed the nature of acceptable behaviors.
- Castigate and berate the handful of courageous, liberty-loving governors who resisted the temptation to dictate how their residents would live and, instead, trusted the natural order to sort this disease.
- Use the power of the purse to force hospitals to fall in line with CMS reimbursement rules and CDC demands on treatment protocol.
- Provide huge financial incentives to further fan the flame of fear, and waste billions of dollars. Medicare paid hospitals three times more to treat patients coded as suffering from COVID-19 than if the patient had a more common disease.
As a result of government directly and through players it influenced, treatment decisions made by medical professionals resulted in increased individual suffering and the needless death of tens of thousands of humans.
Governments ordered tens of thousands of COVID-19 infected individuals to receive treatment in facilities occupied by the most vulnerable of patients.
The federal government’s management of COVID-19, then, provides a picture of how it would manage individual health care, should Congress put it in charge. This must be avoided.
Instead, let us come together to find ways the private sector can increase health care access, restore and enhance quality, and reduce the costs.
Dave Racer
Dave Racer, MLitt, is an author, publisher, commentator, and teacher. He has 22 books about health care to his credit as author, co-author, or editor.
Greg Dattilo
Greg Dattilo, CEBS, is an employee benefits consultant with more than 45 years of experience.
