Speaking of health care …

I think that the motivation for this latest piece of legislation is to give a one-time cash injection to the industry by forcing the uninsured – mostly young and healthy – to contribute. It is not a permanent or even a long-term fix, but it is probably guesstimated by the politicians who wrote the legislation that this will get them to retirement (3-7 years in the case of the president) before the entire system collapses due to demographic and other factors (namely that it’s a foul socialist and fascist system which destroys instead of protecting or enhancing people’s lives).

This confirms H. H. Hoppe’s observation that democratic societies suffer because the time frame in which policies are calculated is never any longer than a politician or bureaucrat’s career. And since politicians and bureaucrats tend to achieve their greatest power relatively late in their careers, after a lifetime of climbing the ladder, the overall time frame in which they consider the consequences of their actions maybe be only about 5-10 years or less. The closer they get to their best-before date, the more desperate and (ultimately) destructive the policies that they advocate.

The most extreme example of this that I can think of is Hitler’s final days in the bunker when knowing he had only a couple of weeks to live he ordered the destruction of the entire infrastructure of Germany – every bridge, dam, canal, powerplant, etc. Call it insane, but as a way of slowing down the foreign attackers it was an entirely logical and practical way of preserving his own life for a few more days or weeks. The order was ignored however by generals and bureaucrats who saw themselves having a much longer life in Germany after the war, and who at that moment had more actual power in their hands than the fuhrer.

Knowing this tendency makes it far easier to understand why ridiculous and destructive policies are proposed and enacted by politicians. Depending on their putative retirement date, post-retirement plans and life expectancy, most of these policies are quite sensible and rewarding (for them). The question therefore is not why they wield their vast powers in ways which are harmful to the general public – the question is why the public gives them this power in the first place.

billwald,

Considering the length of the bill and the character of Congressmen, I would bet money that the answer is strictly no.

Is there an actual completed bill to read?

I did read some of the House bill just to have ammo to argue with a couple of people who insisted that certain things weren’t in the bill. But truly, what’s the point in arguing the elements of the bill when the very premise of the entire bill is one HUGE assault on Liberty? The whole thing needs to be thrown out.

After 100′s of on line debates about health care, I have come to the conclusion that no amount of facts in the world will convince people. It must be something at a deeper fundamental level that I have yet to find.