I don’t want to give the wrong impression, but it may already be too late. If you read enough, you’ll see that people in countries that have various forms of nationalized healthcare, or at least nationalized healthcare coverage are mostly happy with it. People deal with whatever they have to work with. In other words, if something were to be passed, and it worked overall, I don’t think it would be the end of the world. That doesn’t mean I’m not worried what is hidden in those 1000 pages, but I’m not going to get crazy if it does get passed.
I am getting frustrated at people scoffing and ridiculing others for being worried about the federal government involvement in things that it doesn’t have any jurisdiction over. Calling them “unamerican” like our speaker of the house did is unexcusable. Whatever you may think of those people, they do have an argument that has some force, it’s called the 10th amendment. The 10th amendment (the last of the original bill of rights) is the key difference between our government and all of the other governments out there.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
It is a clear limitation on the extent of the powers and scope of the federal government. Granted, the people yelling at the meetings are not citing the 10th amendment, but their sentiment is the effectively the same. Like it or not, it is there and we shouldn’t ignore it, or the people that share the sentiment.
Of course, the 10th amendment has all but been ignored for all of the 20th century. The supreme court has twisted itself into knots using the commerce clause in order justify all sorts of federal involvements that are not in the constitution. I do wish that we would remember what the federal government is supposed to do, it is very clearly spelled out in the constitution. The 10th amendment was put in there to prevent the federal government from emulating a monarchy. You have to have limits to prevent that, an the 10th is it. On the other hand, the proper use of the commerce clause could in fact help out this issue and the government could stay within its prescribed bounds. SIGH, I guess it’s too much to ask for that to happen…