George Rebane

Yesterday’s nationquake still trembles, and now we await the aftershocks that will follow in the coming months.  They will come as surprises to many but not all of us.  Only one much-touted promise of Obamacare will actually come true – redistributive subsidies.  But you will NOT see the promised

• Lower insurance premiums, they will go up;
• Reduction in budget deficits, they will sky rocket;
• Reduction in overall healthcare spending, it will continue going up;
• A more competitive US economy, anemic growth will be institutionalized;
• No reductions in Medicare benefits, they will be reduced;
• Ability to keep your healthcare plan, you will be jailed if you resist complying with government directives that mandate your new healthcare regime.

And above all, your individual freedoms will now take a noticeable hit as the newly hired 17,000 to 20,000 federal bureaucrats begin their work sniffing up your backside.  Who will be most disappointed? most likely those with personal stories of medical hardships, perhaps due to going crosswise with an insurance company.  These folks will now expect a bright sunrise followed by a new day that will see their neighbors joyfully pitching in to pay their medical bills.

Perhaps the most pernicious lie that the progressives have foisted on the unthinking is that ‘healthcare is a right’.  Never mind that the entire concept of rights has been mangled beyond repair by our public schools and the leftwing media, the operational definition of rights and privileges was recognized by our Founders who found very few of them “inalienable”.  And even the inalienable ones they had to group with those that the government unevenly upheld and could also remove.  Before Obamacare, we had the right to include healthcare among our purchases, now that right will be replaced by government specified and rationed levels of care.

My own lament on the larger ramifications of nationalized healthcare is recorded in ‘The First of a Grand Trifecta?’, and follows in a consistent stream the future I have seen for some years now.

One of the compliments that my leftwing readers often pay is to credit me with the introduction of ideas and opinions beyond my meager accomplishments.  While I have introduced a number of views and perspectives, most of my contributions are personal commentaries through the lenses of systems science and a rich life that reflect the ideas of a mature and established ideological class.  Often these pages have some claim on primacy due to the speed that a small blogger today is able to get his thoughts published.  But overall, being called out as a lone rightwing wolf howling at the moon may simply reflect the constrained reading horizons of some, but by no means all, of my progressive readers.

In this light I want to bring to your attention the lament of a nationally syndicated and respected conservative columnist and academic, Victor Davis Hanson.  Last night before turning out the lights, I ran into Hanson’s lengthy view of what the passage of Obamacare will mean to America.  It is the most dire and detailed long-term prognosis from Hanson’s pen that I have read.  Hanson and I often fly in a tight ideological formation, therefore I recommend his extended thoughts in ‘We’ve Crossed the Rubicon’ (aka, the tipping point).