An unhealthy deadline

Four Days. That's what is left of a presidential deadline for Congress passing ObamaCare. Historians are calling it the largest and most costly piece of social legislation in congressional history.

The president who campaigned on transparency and bridging the great partisan divide, has informed Congress the debate is over even if it means passage without the support of a single Republican and, if necessary, by one vote. The health care industry is one-sixth of the U.S. economy. Putting such a large chunk of the economy under federal control is one thing: frightening.

Take the U. S. Post Office. Government run since 1775 with a monopoly on first class mail and laying off thousands in recent years while raising the price of postage, it will still finish the fiscal year with a projected deficit of $7 billion.

Need more? Uncle Sam's mortgage finance company Fannie Mae reported a fourth quarter loss of $16.3 billion. How about the simplicity of the federal tax code that began as 14 pages in 1913 and has exploded to 67,024? A confidence builder or enough to make you sick?

Despite three political races where Obama campaigned for the losers in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts and a reported 35 speeches later, Obama insists on ramming through this massive bill that the majority opposes. Whatever happen to "We the People?" Why does it take 2,000 pages of legislation to provide medical insurance to those who have any?

Arrogance is never a virtuous quality in any leader, and when asked if he's willing to accept the price of pushing through his health care legislation that the majority of Americans oppose, Obama unveils himself by responding he would rather be "a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president." Forget that two out of three Americans oppose it, after all - Obama knows best.

Like the stimulus before it, the haste in passing health care only precludes Americans from comprehending what comprises this colossal piece of legislation that even members of Congress are unlikely to have completely read, or even understand. No problem, just charge it to future American generations. The Greatest Generation, we aren't.

We are creating our own man-made earthquake that will make the real ones in Haiti and Chile look tame. As Mark Stein writes in National Review, the country is on its way to "redefine the relationship between the citizen and the state in fundamental ways that make limited government all but impossible."

Pushing through such a complex bill with so many fundamental concerns is not only imprudent, but extremely poor governance. I'm sure the majority would agree that no health care reform is better than the wrong health care reform. If the president and Congress want to genuinely serve the health care needs of the American people, they need to stop and listen to their constituents and discover what the "common good" really means.

Before Chris Carney and other members of Congress vote, they need to sincerely reflect on who they owe their allegiance to - their constituents who elected them or their party's political leaders? Any politician, regardless of political affiliation, needs to understand they are not in office to fulfill their own mandates. Far from it. They are the elected representatives of the people. To blindly follow partisan politics is undemocratic and remains a distinctive threat to the common good and our founding liberties.

The Constitution does not give Congress the power to require that Americans have health insurance or that it is a right. Any law requiring every American to have health insurance expands the federal government's authority to an unparalleled level. Think about it. If the government can mandate the purchase of insurance, what's next? The Founding Fathers would be horrified. John Hancock never would have dreamed of asking for something like this and he was an insurance company.

The core problem with government-run health care is that it doesn't make decisions in the best interests of the people, but in the best interests of government. Federally run health care is not about health care, it's about government control or, to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, a government big enough to guarantee health care is also big enough to limit it.

Government-provided health care will not be a competitor, but a monopoly like the federal monopoly the Post Office has with first class mail. We all know what a letter bomb that has been. Any legislation that leaves the system in worse shape is not a cure, but a disease.

(Maresca, a local freelance writer, composes "Talking Points" for each Sunday edition.)