The Health Care Reform Debate In USA: Freedom, Unfreedom

Alan Keyes: "Health Care: What The Revolt To Freedom Requires"

The conservative activist and America's Independent Party member opines: "Once we shift the focus of the health care discussion from caring for sickness to preserving health, one thing becomes clear immediately. If we wish to remain a free people, health care cannot be the government's business. Though would-be tyrants like Obama want us to forget it, lawful coercion (the force of law) is what ultimately distinguishes government work from other group activities. It makes sense to say that we will force people to be healthy only if our concept of human integrity (healthy human life or existence) includes slavery. But as Americans we long ago rejected this possibility because it is inconsistent with respect for the God ordained unalienable rights that are an essential aspect of human being, i.e., what it means to be what we are. Slaves may or may not have healthy bodies, but slavery cannot be a healthy human condition. By beginning with this observation, we are led to reflect on the comprehensive meaning of human health - one that goes beyond the material condition of the human body to include the mental and spiritual aspects of human life."

Mr. Keyes continues his commentary: "To do so requires that we respect the role that human will, conscience and spirit have to play in the critical decisions that influence a person's state of health. It requires that we accept individual choice and responsibility as the first premise of any health care approach. Though many opponents of the Obama faction's proposed socialist takeover decry its implications in this regard, how many of them are honest enough to admit that the third-party payer system it would replace just as surely eviscerates the exercise of responsible individual choice in any meaningful sense? Responsible choices take account of both the benefits derived from a decision, and the costs it involves. But the third party payer system puts individuals in no position to do so. Sure, they choose an insurance plan. But at the point of delivery, they lack both the information and the incentive to react effectively to the relationship between the service they receive and the price set for it. This deficiency has at least two bad effects: a) Providers have little incentive to respect the power of individual clients; b) individuals have little incentive to resent or appreciate the price paid for the quality of service they receive."

More commentary from Mr. Keyes about health care reform: "Since it breaks the price/perceived quality ratio, the third party payer insurance system abandons a vital prerequisite of any free market system. It breaks the cost governing mechanism that generally allows the market to achieve equilibrium at a point of price efficiency that reflects informed, responsive decisions by the individuals whose activities make up its existence. These individuals are replaced by corporate (or government) bureaucracies driven by control/management and profit/budgetary preoccupations that have, at best, only a coincidental relationship to the actual price/quality ratio of any particular service transaction. How can it be anything but coincidental when it excludes from reckoning the perceived experience of the particular individuals involved. As the result of what we might call this coincidental price structure, system resources are distributed with little or no regard for perceived cost-effectiveness."

Constructive Feedback Blog: "Atlanta's Concerned Black Clergy Come Out In Support Of The Public Option"

And the conservative blog takes issue: "They ask the GOVERNMENT to reshape the system so that more resources will run down and wash the masses. You will NEVER hear them propose a strategy which, in balance depends upon the CONTINUED PRODUCTIVE ACTIONS of the Black community as the primary means of insuring that these needs are met. The Concerned Black Clergy of Atlanta will remain in my 'Adversaries To Black Consciousness' list BECAUSE they have no respect for the Black Culture. In seeing the need for medical services they fail to realize that:

* THEY are largely responsible for the present political and economic order WITHIN Atlanta that is not able to provide the financing for affordable health care. Thus they turn to NATIONALIZATION to cover for their economic incompetence

* They did not FACTOR IN these services being expressed AMONG THE PEOPLE as an essential part of their platform. Instead, in their perverted manner - they have it as part of their SOCIAL JUSTICE PLATFORM. DEMANDING THAT THE STATE provide Black people with health care - NOT ONE DAMNED TIME asking our COMMUNITY to organize ourselves so that WE PRODUCE MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS with matching funds from our community to do so.

* Under their watch Southwest Atlanta Hospital CLOSED DOWN. They were UNABLE to find a voice to tell the 'Richie Rich' Black folks in Cascade Heights [local neighborhood that's home to much of Atlanta's black elite] to SUPPORT THEIR OWN COMMUNITY'S Hospital where they live rather than the White Man's Hospital in Buckhead!!!!

* They have a DISCONNECTION between the role of the Atlanta Public Schools and the Academic Need for Medical Professionals. SO MUCH of their focus has been placed upon OUTSIDE WHITE REPUBLICANS that they are unwilling to see that it is the INTERNAL 'Pirate In Training' [street criminal] that is the #1 THEFT OF INSTRUCTIONAL TIME WITHIN THE CLASS ROOM.

These are the reasons why the C.B.C. is a threat to Black Cultural Consciousness. They only want to FEED. They have almost no clue in how to develop a FARMING ECOSYSTEM which has the PEOPLE aligned to produce their own best interests. They instead prefer SOUP LINES where people are forced to hear their sermons as a condition of eating."