Frank Salvato, Managing Editor

Missing the Larger Point on the Public Option
September 4, 2009

As Congress prepares to return to work – now there’s an oxymoron – the subject of healthcare is weighing heavy in the air. The August recess provided the American people with contentious town hall meetings where We the People were described by opportunistic, power-hungry politicians as “astroturfers,” “un-American” and “terrorists.” It also saw the Progressive Liberal machine dispatch their minions – special interest group contingents from ACORN, MoveOn.org, SEIU, etc. – to the citizenry in an effort to silence the dissent about government-run healthcare and provide a cheery backdrop for Progressives and President Obama as they “met” with the unwashed masses. But in the debate over healthcare and the public option everyone, sans a very few, missed a constitutional point of order.

The Declaration of Independence, the first of our Charters of Freedom, states:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...”

Thomas Jefferson and his fellow Framers, acknowledging the philosophy of Natural Law, made it quite clear that we, as an American people, believe in and accept that the right to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” is unalienable. By establishing these “unalienable rights,” the Framers meant to ensure that government would refrain from legislating laws that would encroach upon or deny these natural rights – these unalienable rights – to every American citizen.

Throughout the national debate on healthcare and the discussion of a government-run public option – which has now also morphed into the notion of a co-operative approach, for the fact that government would have to establish a co-operative – economists and political analysts have agreed that the only way to control costs within a government-run system is to define limits for the allocation of treatment in relation to the individual and the disease. Medical care would have to become – to a certain degree – cost effective.

The very nature of the idea that government – in any circumstance – would be empowered to deny vital medical treatment, to anyone – regardless of age or frailty of health – is a direct attack on the unalienable right to “Life.” There can be no other way to look at it. If someone needs a medical procedure or a certain medication to live and a government-run healthcare system denies that procedure or medication, they have denied “Life” to an American citizen in violation of our declared and unalienable rights.

This is not to take issue with all entitlement programs, although constitutionally they are all suspect. Medicare, for example provides for medical care and, therefore “Life.” Social Security provides for the welfare of the American senior and, therefore “the pursuit of Happiness.” Even the soldier – both volunteer and conscripted – are issued weapons by the government to “preserve, protect and defend” not only the country from our enemies, but the individual. The weapons issued to soldiers by our military serve to protect the lives (“Life”) of our soldiers.

Plainly stated, a government-run healthcare system would need to rely on rationing – or – limiting access to healthcare for some so that limited healthcare would be provided to all. By accepting the fact that there would be rationing – or limiting – we acknowledge that there would be a process of prioritization. This process of prioritizing individuals based on their medical conditions and vital statistics compromises their unencumbered access to healthcare and is intrinsically juxtaposed to the individual’s right to “Life” and “the pursuit of Happiness,” rights guaranteed to us by Natural Law and provided for in The Charters of Freedom.

Should the Progressives and Democrats of Congress pass a healthcare reform bill that includes a government-run healthcare option it would be passing legislation that establishes a system whereby select individuals would  be denied their unalienable rights; legislation that encroaches, infringes and denies “Life” and “the pursuit of Happiness” to designated people based on man’s law, not Natural Law. Congress would be knowingly complicit in establishing unconstitutional legislation. Those voting for the legislation would be derelict in their official duties as elected officials and in violation of their Oath of Office which reads:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

Progressives and Liberal Democrats will object to this line of thinking because they have continuously abused the idea of “rights.” To the Progressive and Liberal Democrat everyone has the “right” to healthcare, the “right” to a job, the “right” to own a home, etc. These are the basic tenets of a society based on collectivism; the basic tenets of Socialism. “From each according to his ability to each according to his needs,” is a philosophy antithetical to Natural Law and diametrically opposed to the American philosophy.

The Complete Lives System, authored in part by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother to President Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel and senior advisor to the president, is a perfect example of Progressive ideology facing off with true constitutional Americanism.

In the Complete Lives System, the worth of “Life” is relative to the ability to produce and to the “investment” made in that life:

"When implemented, the complete lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated...This may be justified by public opinion, since broad consensus favors adolescents over very young infants, and young adults over very elderly people."

Dr. Emanuel’s Mengele-esque idea about “Life” also addresses the “worth” of infants:

"Strict youngest-first allocation directs scarce resources predominantly to infants. This approach seems incorrect. The death of a 20-year-old woman is intuitively worse than that of a 2-month-old girl, even though the baby has had less life. The 20-year-old has a much more developed personality than the infant, and has drawn upon the investment of others to begin as-yet-unfulfilled projects...Adolescents have received substantial education and parental care, investments that will be wasted without a complete life. Infants, by contrast, have not yet received these investments...It is terrible when an infant dies, but worse, most people think, when a three-year-old child dies, and worse still when an adolescent does."

Even the most constitutionally illiterate among us can recognize that Dr. Emanuel’s Complete Lives System completely ignores our constitutional and unalienable right to “Life,” especially for those not in his pre-prescribed optimal age range of 25-40 years of age. From a legal standpoint, the Complete Lives System is unconstitutional and any healthcare system that alludes to any aspect of it should be fiercely opposed. From a humanitarian standpoint, this morally relativistic screed of death is nothing more that genocidal in nature. Dr. Emanuel and all who embrace his belief system would make Hitler cringe for their barbarity and indifference to the human race.

In Progressives and Liberal Democrats advancing massive social entitlement programs – and in this instance a healthcare entitlement – they use entitlement programs as a weapon; a weapon of dependency. Since the time of Franklin Roosevelt, Liberal Democrats and Progressives have lured the poverty-stricken and the less fortunate away from the American work ethic and toward the “Nanny State”; dependence on the State. And a society that is dependent on the State cannot and has never been a free State. Thus we have the assault on the third unalienable right, “Liberty.”

In their quest for “social justice” Progressives and Liberal Democrats have lost sight of why the Charters of Freedom – in their purest form – are essential to equality for all. When our government abides by the Charters of Freedom our society thrives and we serve as an example of hope for liberty and the individual, worldwide. When they compromise The Charters of Freedom with special interest legislation, entitlement and the introduction of Marxist ideology, they attack our own society; they attack the American people via their attack on The Charters of Freedom.

Is our healthcare system in need of reform? No. It’s the best in the world. But our healthcare insurance system is in need of reform and I addressed this issue in an article titled, You Say You Want a Real Solution. True reform, leading to affordable health insurance for all, is attainable and it can be attained through the private sector.

The socialization of the American healthcare system continues our current slide down the Progressive, neo-Marxist slippery slope. If government-run healthcare is legislated we must view it as unconstitutional and we must challenge it at the highest judicial levels.