Republicans push a bill they would have fought 7 years ago



March 8, 2017

By Dan Popp – Eric HofferThe "Republicans" have introduced an antidote for Obamacare, and – surprise! – it isn't the Constitution. Or free markets. Our old Marxist pal Paul Ryan, who once ran for Vice President on the promise to "save" FDR's lawless Ponzi scheme, has cooked up a "replacement" for the ACA.Of course, there is no replacement that would be constitutional because our National Restraining Order does not grant the federal government any powers to positively provide for our health, our care, insurance, health care insurance, faux health care insurance, or anything of the sort. You can search our founding documents until you need government-issued eye drops and you will not find any excuse for Washington pretending to take care of sick people.I can't prove the assertion in my title – no alternative history is provable – but if the Democrats in 2010 had come out with Ryan's version of Obamacare, it's a good guess that Republicans would have opposed it.Vehemently.The beloved fiction of forcing insurance companies to insure the uninsurable is madness. Madness given the force of law. It isthe kind of legislated insanity that created the housing bubble that ultimately brought the government's house of cards down on all our heads: Banks shall lend money to those who probably can't pay it back. You cannot turn purple into yellow by passing a law requiring that purple become yellow. And yet we've done it twice now. And the mental illness has spread to both major parties.If you can require businesses to issue health insurance to the sick, why not make them issue life insurance to the dead? There is no difference, in principle.I'm scourging our Socialist Speaker of the House – and all of these oathbreaking scoundrels should be impeached, removed, tarred-and-feathered, then jailed for a very long time – but ultimately this is our fault. We the People are greedy. We want. We have not, apparently, because we vote not. Instead of looking to God to bless our labors, instead of looking to our brothers and sisters to be our "safety net" in an emergency, we look to government to force strangers to "help." And with that power, politicians buy our votes. And they keep spending even when they can tax no more. Then they borrow, and so impoverish our children and grandchildren.And we say, "More free stuff, Congress. People dying in the streets here, ya know."Faithless cowards that we are, once the poison of Statism has worked through the veins and now into the capillaries, amputation is unthinkable.It would hurt.People tell me that the federal income tax can never be repealed – even though we've gotten rid of it twice before. Many say that Socialist Security cannot be abolished – even though Chile and dozens of other countries have done it. We say that, Oh, My Gosh, Obamacare has just become too much a part of our lives to ever think about cutting it out – what would those 25-year-old toddlers do if they had to payto see a doctor? How would they buy video games? (Note to self: New entitlement idea for Ryan.)We repealed the 18th Amendment after a decade and a half. We didn't "repeal-and-replace" it with some "better" form of Prohibition. Because if you replace something, you haven't really repealed it, have you? Von Bismarck Care has been a yoke on our necks for only half that time. Are we really too morally weak and enervated to throw it off?Entirely?© Dan Popp