Howard: Egalitarian care is not American

‘ ‘ ‘ Egalitarianism has become the watchword of the Obama administration. As it turns its back… ‘ ‘ ‘ Egalitarianism has become the watchword of the Obama administration. As it turns its back on liberty in favor of a potently ignorant populism, the administration that was elected to address the economic troubles plaguing this nation has stopped searching for solutions and begun bribing the mob with bread and circuses. The latest play to the populist hordes: universal health care. ‘ ‘ ‘ The administration tells us that not only is universal health care possible, but it can be achieved without any contribution from those it benefits. ‘ ‘ ‘ But the money has to come from somewhere. In President Barack Obama’s plan, that somewhere is the coffers of small businesses and the pockets of successful working Americans. ‘ ‘ ‘ In a document on its health care plans, the Obama administration said it will fund its universal health care plans by ‘rebalancing the tax code so that the wealthiest pay more.’ ‘ ‘ ‘ Who are these mystical wealthy Americans who will fund our new age of health and prosperity? Why, households with an income of $250,000 or more a year, of course. ‘ ‘ ‘ Obama’s ‘wealthy’ make up 2 percent of the population, earn 24 percent of all income, pay 43 percent of all federal taxes and, under Obama’s plan, would also take up the burden of the nation’s health care costs. ‘ ‘ ‘ Obama’s health care plan represents an attempt to capitalize on the new climate of class warfare that his election initiated in this nation. The wealthy have become an inhuman abstraction in the rhetoric of the Obama administration. They are the scapegoats of the economic crisis, yet at the same time, plundering their wealth has been identified as the salvation of middle- and working-class America. ‘ ‘ ‘ The short-term effects of Obama’s health care plan are clear. First, the successful will be penalized for their accomplishments, and their wealth will be redistributed to subsidize the care of the indigent. Taxpayers will be forced to subsidize the health care of the uninsurable or the chronically unwell. ‘ ‘ ‘ This includes individuals who should be provided for, people who, through no fault of their own, are unable to get private insurance because of a chronic disease. However, Obama’s plan for universal health care will primarily force Americans who live healthy lifestyles, who exercise regularly and eat well, to bear the burden of the obese and the lazy ‘mdash; a classification of Americans far more numerous than those who cannot receive insurance, through no fault of their own. ‘ ‘ ‘ Americans who suffer from lifestyle-related illnesses, such as heart disease and adult-onset diabetes, and people who smoke or are obese would be the primary beneficiaries of Obama’s plan. But these people should never be cared for at the expense of the public, because their problems are of their own creation. ‘ ‘ ‘ In the short-term, such a plan constitutes an un-American assault on the liberty of the successful as the government begins to take money from them, not to defend the nation or to provide for necessary public works, but to subsidize the mob. ‘ ‘ ‘ More troubling is the fact that Obama’s long-term vision of an egalitarian America is one where people improve themselves only to be penalized by the failures of their neighbors and where the government works to bring everyone down to the level of the average. Such a system deprives citizens of an incentive for individual success and self-improvement. It turns the excellent into a casualty of the mediocre. ‘ ‘ ‘ But the value of the free market, which Obama is so subtly trying to destroy, is that it allows the intelligent, the vigorous and the exemplary to triumph over the ignorant, the lazy and the average. ‘ ‘ ‘ This is why the best and most practically educated people in our society, including the very doctors whose small businesses and economic liberties would be swallowed whole by socialized medicine, are in that top 2 percent of households Obama identifies as wealthy. ‘ ‘ ‘ The market rewards them for developing skills such as surgery or dentistry, which are both in high demand and remarkably complex. It does not reward someone without a high school diploma, nor should it. ‘ ‘ ‘ James Madison wrote, ‘That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest.’ Madison and the rest of this nation’s founding fathers initiated a war to establish a just government on these principles. They have guaranteed American liberty for more than 200 years. ‘ ‘ ‘ Let us not, in our fear and anger, allow Obama to supplant this American liberty with un-American egalitarianism. ‘ E-mail Giles at gbh4@pitt.edu.