The sacrifice of your health care
By Richard E. Ralston
web posted August 30, 2013
Donald Berwick, former head of Medicare and Medicaid, was appointed to that position by President Barack Obama based on his moral philosophy as he stated it: "Excellent medical care is, by definition, redistributional."
The labor unions that helped push through the redistributional Affordable Care Act have finally taken former House Speaker Pelosi’s advice to read it to find out what is in it--and are now freaking out.
They are finding that excellent medical care is "redistributional" in that, in order to keep it, the Department of Health and Human Services will, by fiat, have to distribute delays or waivers from Obamacare.
In fact, exceptions to the law, such as the recent one-year delay to the employer mandate, along with more than 1,000 various waivers already issued, are the logical consequence of a philosophy that subordinates the quality, quantity, availability--and, yes, affordability--of care by taking it from those who have it, or could afford it, in order to give it to others.
We accept such philosophy only at the peril of our freedom and health.
When laws such as Obamacare are enforced, medical care is constrained to fit aggregates, not patients as individuals. Politicians and bureaucrats will allow only treatments that are deemed "fair" for the group.
Obamacare’s Independent Payment Advisory Board will allow only treatments that are "affordable" for all. "Comparative effectiveness" commissions will allow only medications that provide the same results for everyone, not those that help only some people--including you.
If the government’s goal is equality in medical care, Obamacare will eventually achieve it: equal suffering for all.
That includes the medical industry itself. Entrepreneurs--who are taxed on the sale of new medications and equipment, even when sold at a loss--will provide fewer innovations.
And thus future generations will suffer as progress in the field of medicine declines.
Government medical care will inevitably become political medical care, as private wealth is destroyed by those who dedicate their lives to increasing and preserving their power over us. Political agendas will overrule science and medicine.
Politicians prevent drug companies from extending and improving our lives because the companies make a profit. They prevent physicians from practicing medicine as they think best. Individuals are made to sacrifice their freedom to politicians who will block any attempt by a patient to manage his own medical care.
Private, self-interested action is characterized as "greedy" and "selfish."
That is the way politicians assert their moral superiority over those who think clearly in their own best interest.
Those who want to destroy our freedom in medical care want to convince us that individual freedom is immoral and sacrifice is noble.
If we are to sacrifice responsibility for the care of our own bodies, we must first be convinced to sacrifice our minds--and reason itself. Those who want us to abandon reason seek to replace freedom with whatever they tell us to do.
When and how can we put a stop to this nonsense? Only when we insist that we each have a constitutional right to use our minds to make our own decisions and take action to preserve our own health and lives as we each think best, in partnership with the physicians and medical care that we choose. Nothing less will do. 
Richard E. Ralston is the executive director of Americans for Free Choice in Medicine, Newport Beach, California. Copyright © 2013 Americans for Free Choice in Medicine. All rights reserved.