Because, when you think about it, it also could be said of America that we do not have a "comprehensive food-provision system" or a "comprehensive clothing-provision system" or a "comprehensive housing system" or a "comprehensive economic-planning system" or a "comprehensive job-providing system."
In fact, of course, those comprehensive systems are only available in countries that comprehensively control human lives and actions. How else can the government assure "complete" things if it doesn't control things "completely" -- or "totally"?
We have seen many examples in this sad world of what the citizens get when their governments provide comprehensive or total goods and services. Freedom of action -- or inaction -- is possessed "comprehensively" by the government, while whatever the government gives the public "comprehends" the total that the public gets of a good or service. As between two parties, something comprehensively possessed by one is, by definition, completely not possessed by the other.
The current health care proposal is a ripe example. In a recent op-ed defending the administration's health care proposal, Sen. Ted Kennedy and Bob Shrum argued: "We also need to move from a system that rewards doctors for the sheer volume of tests and treatments they prescribe to one that rewards quality and positive outcomes. For example, in Medicare today, 18 percent of patients discharged from a hospital are readmitted within 30 days -- at a cost of more than $15 billion in 2005. Most of these readmissions are unnecessary, but we don't reward hospitals and doctors for preventing them. By changing that, we'll save billions of dollars while improving the quality of care for patients."
But as Bill Kristol in The Weekly Standard brilliantly pointed out about the idea that the readmissions aren't needed and that we don't reward the prevention of them: "The most important implication of the Kennedy-Shrum claim ... is this: The government is going to decide -- ahead of time, obviously, since deciding after the fact wouldn't save any money; and based on certain general criteria, since the government isn't going to review each individual case -- what kinds of hospital readmissions for the elderly are 'unnecessary' and what kinds aren't. And it's going to set up a system 'to reward hospitals and doctors for preventing' the unnecessary ones. That is, the government will reward hospitals and doctors for denying care they now provide, care the government will now deem 'unnecessary.'"
Of course, we have the advantage that the Kennedy-Shrum article was published for all to read. The actual legislation doubtlessly will not be available for review before it is voted on.
All we can know for sure is that the Democrats' comprehensive health care reform legislation will empower bureaucrats comprehensively to make all decisions, vital and trivial, regarding your health care coverage -- or non-coverage. The comprehensive power of the federal government will completely and totally extinguish your control over your health treatment.
The price of freedom is that you will not be taken care of comprehensively. The price of being taken care of comprehensively is that you won't be free. You pays your price and you takes your choice. Down with Comprehensiveness! Up the Revolution!
Tony Blankley
Tony Blankley, a conservative author and commentator who served as press secretary to Newt Gingrich during the 1990s, when Republicans took control of Congress, died Sunday January 8, 2012. He was 63.
Blankley, who had been suffering from stomach cancer, died Saturday night at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, his wife, Lynda Davis, said Sunday.
In his long career as a political operative and pundit, his most visible role was as a spokesman for and adviser to Gingrich from 1990 to 1997. Gingrich became House Speaker when Republicans took control of the U.S. House of Representatives following the 1994 midterm elections.
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