Keeping our Republic by Matthew T. Parks

Author:Matthew T. Parks [Parks, Matthew T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781498272964
Publisher: Resource Publications
Published: 2015-10-15T07:00:00+00:00

4

Justice

“an improper or wicked project”

—James Madison, Federalist 10, November 22, 1787

Human equality requires that law treat all citizens in the same way. Nevertheless, it is the experience of almost all people under almost all governments that the law benefits the well-connected at the expense of the rest. In popular governments like ours, policy-makers negotiate with “stakeholders” for the sake of mutual advantage, trading subsidies, tax breaks, and regulatory favors for political support. The results are thoroughly unrepublican—and thoroughly unjust—the sorts of policies and programs the Founders did not hesitate to call “improper or wicked.” In recent years, we have become too accustomed to such politics, but the pervasiveness and brazenness of the Obama Administration’s use of these tactics to move its health care agenda forward has seemingly reawakened our repugnance to them.

In relatively plain view, President Obama cut deals with the various groups he feared might oppose his health care bill, guaranteeing their profits at the expense of their independence. Pharmaceutical companies were promised a cap on the profits the government would confiscate and administration opposition to importing drugs from abroad. The AARP, with its own stake in the health insurance business, was persuaded to hold its tongue despite a half a trillion dollars in cuts to the Medicare program dear to its members. The American Medical Association’s opposition to a government-sponsored insurance program in June, 2009, was turned into an endorsement of a House bill creating one in just five weeks with a promise to eliminate a cut in Medicare payments to doctors.

Those who wouldn’t take the carrot, got the stick. At a New Hampshire town hall meeting, for example, President Obama suggested that doctors prefer to amputate the feet of diabetics rather than manage the disease in order to get the $30-50,000 reimbursement (actually $500-$700) that an amputation brings. In his health care speech before a joint session of Congress, he claimed (incorrectly) that a man from Illinois had died because he lost his health insurance in the middle of a chemotherapy cycle for failing to report a minor case of gallstones. Thus, even while President Obama bought the silence of the health care industry, he simultaneously demonized it, attempting to convince the American people that he was their champion and protector.

In the Obama-era, policy is now made by presidentially-appointed czars in cooperation with business and non-profit stakeholders. Who counts in this system? Not the voting and tax-paying public, whose “stake” in what happens to their lives and property is ignored. This became all the more evident as public support for health care reform collapsed during the months-long congressional debate over the House and Senate bills. Instead, the true players are those with the right political connections and lobbyists. Once they are “on board,” the ship is ready to sail. And once the ship sails, it is the same faction of the well-connected and approved that mans the helm for the sake of its own power and profit.

Faction

Such self-interested behavior was anticipated by the American Founders. They knew that human beings are naturally more eager to pursue their private good than the good of the whole.

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