BCT Editorial – 2/18/09

This page was last updated on February 21, 2009.

Storm clouds; Editorial; Beaver County Times; February 18, 2009.

The editorial subtitle is “Effort to change health care in U.S. faces rough weather.”

The editorial refers to “the Divided We Fall coalition.” It’s actually named “Divided We Fail.” It’s either sloppy editing or research on the part of the Times.

The editorial refers to “the special interests.” For most people, a “special interest” is someone with whom you disagree.

The editorial says, “In the aftermath of the presidential and congressional elections, the group got a favorable political environment. President Barack Obama campaigned on bringing Democrats and Republicans together on health care and doing what was best for the American people, not the special interests.” I believe the editorial was less than honest in the second sentence. I believe the Times really feels “the group got a favorable political environment” because we have a Democrat-majority Congress with Democrat leadership that wants a government-run healthcare system and a Democrat President who shares that position.

The editorial tells us “Divided We Fail” “also got a Democrat-controlled Congress, which would be much more open to government involvement in health-care reform.”

As previous editorials, I believe this editorial would lead most readers to conclude the Times is in favor of a government-run healthcare system. However, Times editorial page editor, Bob Uhriniak, disagrees with my conclusion that the Times supports a government-run, taxpayer-funded universal healthcare system. You can read more about this here. If you’ve been following Times editorials on the healthcare topic, you’ll note the editorials refer to the nebulous term “universal healthcare” yet never describe what the Times means by that. It’s difficult to debate someone on an issue when they don’t define their position.

Finally, here’s what I wrote in a comment posted on the Times website in 2008: “Even if I believed (which I don’t) the idea a government-run, taxpayer-funded monopoly could deliver healthcare cheaper than a true free market system (which we haven’t had since at least WWII) for a given level of accessibility, choice, quality, timeliness of treatment, etc., I’d oppose it because my freedom isn’t for sale.

“When we went with a government-run, taxpayer-funded monopoly to educate our kids, we gave up a bit of our liberty. Very few families can afford to pay both school taxes and the tuition of a private school. We lost another bit of freedom with the enactment of Socialist Security, another bit with Medicare, and so on. Since the line of thinking used by nationalized/socialized healthcare system proponents also applies to every other industry, where do we draw the line? Do we stop at healthcare, or do we move onto the next industry whose ‘overhead and administrative expenses’ are deemed ‘excessive’ by someone?

“Every time we turn over a personal responsibility to the government, or push a local government responsibility to the state or feds, we’re selling our liberty one piece at a time.”