ObamaCare or Obama Cares (The Mandate We Have Now And The Mandate Of Our Forefathers)
As we roll into what may be the most important supreme court vote of our time. I wonder how many people in this country are actually paying attention. There is a debate going on right now that is, without a doubt, life altering for the way the majority of US citizens live their lives. Of course one would have to believe that in the ”era of information” everybody has taken the time to read something about it, albeit a book , a magazine, a blog feed, a newspaper article, a paragraph, a twitter post or a Facebook posting. I mean we spend 700 billion minutes monthly on Facebook in this country. I’m sure we are wildly aware of all significant legislature, right ? Alas….. I would be amiss. For too many Americans, this is a life or death issue. After all no healthcare means no life you know. Lets chat this up a bit. The big debate here is the individual mandate right. What is a mandate you ask, a mandate, by definition, is
An official order or commission to do something.
The debate is whether or not it is ” constitutional ” for the government to force you to pay for coverage. You see, here in the mighty mother Fukin US of A we don’t pay for anything we don’t want to pay for, even if it’s good for us, especially if its good for us. If you try to make us do anything it’s the end of the world as we know it, and the sky is falling and we are all going to sail off the map.
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Except for one thing, people, we all already have a healthcare mandate. In this country if you get sick and go to the hospital it is illegal for the hospital to turn you away. Regardless of whether or not you have coverage, or if your wound is self-inflicted, or if it’s just a matter of bad personal care. when people get sick they get assistance, period, no matter what.
“How?” Well allow me to educate you. The costs for people who get free coverage is figured into the costs of those that pay. It has been that way forever. In fact we had another form of a mandate over 200 years ago:
July of 1798, Congress passed “An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seaman” — which was signed by President Adams — authorizing the creation of a government operated system of marine hospitals and mandating that laboring merchant marine sailors pay a tax to support it. The post-revolutionary generation clearly thought that the national government had a role in subsidizing “government-run health care.” Now, I realize the comparison between this 1798 measure and the individual mandate is imperfect. The 1798 act was a tax — mandatory for all merchant marine sailors to pay if they wanted to work — that was used to support the marine hospital system they used if they got sick or injured. But this was in many ways similar to the system underlying the idea of Medicare-for-all. They paid taxes in exchange for government-run health care. It had the support of the Tea Party demi-God himself, Thomas Jefferson.
Yet the republicans fight. They cry, “this is not what our forefathers intended, this is socialism, wah wah wah.” (or is it ?)
Really this whole debate is about President Obama trying to mandate equal responsibility for all isn’t it? He says, “look, we all use it, one group of people shouldn’t have to pay for everybody else, so we all have to be responsible for ourselves.”
Wait…. Doesn’t that sound a bit….dare I say it, Republican !
What we have to ask ourselves is not whether or not this is what our forefathers intended but whether or not this is what America is. Is Obama care a way to move our country away from democracy and freedom and closer to socialism or closer to democracy and freedom and away from socialism. Do healthier citizens mean a greater nation or does helping our citizens make us weaker. Ask yourself is this just plain old Obamacare or is this really Obama Cares !
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