Big government erodes principles

From: Kathleen Motzko
Franklin Township

Like a previous writer, I also sit in church on Sundays and ponder the immense challenges facing our country. I happen to believe that the health care solution lies in reforming and improving the largely private system we currently have and not replacing it with the massive government-controlled beaurocracy laid out in the 1,000+ page bill in Congress.

I also believe that private enterprise and charity are far more powerful than the collective group-think of an over-extended government influenced by a myriad of special interest groups determined to pick the winners and losers in our society. Private enterprise and charity are far more simple and effective. They are the heart and soul of our country and are what made it as affluent and generous as it is today.

Our founders knew that as government grows bigger, the individual gets smaller. As the power continues to concentrate in Washington, the power of the people, the individual, becomes weak and unimportant. We lose property rights. We lose personal liberty as they take more of our earnings through taxation, leaving us financially unable to fulfill our needs and wants.

Politicians and media elite turn a deaf ear to our protests and label us “Astroturf,” Nazis, angry mobs of extremists, teabagging rednecks, right-wing domestic terrorists, or dupes of big business. They demonize private industry (i.e., “Big Pharma” and “Big Insurance”) in order to push legislation that will destroy these industries. Do they forget that all of these companies were built by private citizens over lifetimes of hard work and personal sacrifice?

Activist judges infiltrate the judicial system and use it as a tool to overturn legislation they deem unfair. Union leaders push for “card check” which eliminates the fundamental right to a secret ballot. Special interest groups push the “fairness doctrine” in order to silence free speech on the airwaves. The left-wing blogosphere or “netroots nation” bullies, smears, or boycotts individuals and businesses who speak out in opposition to their agenda.

Yes, it is easy to hand over control to the government because it takes time and effort on our part to deal with the problems in our communities. Yes, nearly 47 million people lack health insurance, but they do not lack health care. No one is denied health care if they seek it. Sometimes, it can be a struggle for them to find help or ask for it, and it sure would be easier if a government agency just sent the check for them.

As I mentioned in a previous letter, there are many reasons for the rising cost of health insurance, none of which are being addressed in the legislation pushed by the Democrats in Congress.

For example, Senator Klobuchar believes a solution to rising prescription drug costs is to import them from Canada. Now, how does that fix anything? Why not address the real reasons for rising drug costs and fix them? Until the root causes are addressed, the costs will continue to spiral upward, until the 260 million people who have insurance cannot afford to keep what they have and our government bankrupts our country.

This nation was built on the backs of people who aspired to greatness because they knew that they had the opportunity to achieve it. Our government does not aspire to greatness and it certainly does not provide opportunity. It does not demand responsibility and accountability from those it supports through its many entitlement programs.

Every one of them is fraught with waste, fraud, and abuse, and is hemorrhaging tax dollars – Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, SSI, the VA, the post office, just to name a few.

Interestingly, the president recently used the post office as a shining example of a government agency that has successful private competitors (FedEx and UPS). However, he forgot to mention that the post office expects a loss of 6-12 billion dollars this year (last year’s revenues were around 75 billion dollars). Yeah, that’s a real money maker for us taxpayers. Just remember, government does only one thing really well – it consumes the wealth created by private enterprise.

As for the claim that the US is the only industrialized country that doesn’t have a national health insurance plan, that’s fine with me. I prefer to lead, not follow. Yes, our health care system is broken, so let’s fix it. Let’s demand true reform, not untested replacement. Unlike those other countries, we happen to be the most generous and charitable of nations, which is far more important than whether or not we have another massive government entitlement program.

We must allow private industry and personal charity, with the help of the government in a facilitating role, to handle the uninsured, because they can and will manage them in the best way possible.