Though I have concern that every American citizen has affordable health care, too, I have grave concerns about the opinion that the federal government holds the true solution.
History shows that whenever government oversees personal welfare (such as with Medicare, Medicaid, welfare and Social Security), the program is inept, broken, intrusive, impersonalized, oppressive or often bankrupt.
It is no coincidence that the Congressional Budget Office recently released updated figures revealing how the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, will cost twice as much as the original price tag, from $900 billion to $1.76 trillion between now and 2022.
Many of America's Founding Fathers shared a sentiment that can be summarized in this statement: "That government is best which governs least."
Three perilous previews of state-mandated health care have come to my attention recently.
Veteran journalist Bob Unruh of WorldNetDaily reported just a few weeks ago: "In what is being seen as a preview of a fully implemented Obamacare, government officials in Michigan are demanding that a 9-year-old child follow standard procedure and take a dangerous course of cancer medications that can cause additional cancer — even though the boy has had three scans indicating an absence of the disease."
Health Impact News Daily added: "Ken and Erin Stieler are the mom and dad of Jacob — who has been cancer-free since his PET scan in early July. He has had two clean PET scans since then — the most recent in January. Despite all of this, the Michigan Department of Human Services continues to attempt to prosecute this family for medical neglect. If they succeed they will force Jacob to resume chemotherapy despite the fact that the drugs in question are not FDA approved (either for children in general or for this particular cancer). Moreover, these drugs do not promise anything close to a guaranteed cure. And, the FDA requires the drug manufacturers to disclose that these drugs cause new cancers to form, heart disease in children, failure to sexually mature, and many other serious side effects in some cases."
Listen to the parents fight for their child in the video at http://bit.ly/HoJ4d3.
(My wife, Gena, and I encourage those who are willing to help the parents fight this state mandate by financially supporting the HSLDA's Homeschool Freedom Fund. To do so, go to http://bit.ly/HgjR1d.)
And if you think the federal government never will tell you what to do with your child's health care, then consider passages in the Affordable Care Act under the heading "home visitation programs for families with young children and families expecting children," which would provide (via grants to states) for home visitation programs by government agents to educate parents on child behavior and parenting skills.
Imagine how that health care provision might play out as state officials walk into your home invoking their values and beliefs upon your parenting and children.
There is nothing more intrusive than the thought of government coming into our houses, teaching us how to parent and getting under our skin. And the latter is even a literal intent of federally mandated health care.
Most people don't realize — even though it was verified recently by even the left-leaning snopes.com — that an earlier House version of health care legislation (HR 3200), which was reformed and approved into law as the Affordable Care Act (HR 3590), included references to the creation of a national health registry with murky correlations to the tracking of personal information via the implanting of microchips in humans.
The Food and Drug Administration's website explains that "class II" microchips are "subject to special controls," which can be "exempt from the premarket notification" and include "postmarket surveillance." And class III devices are those that "support or sustain human life."
Snopes.com and other pro-Obama agencies were quick to explain the section in the preapproved health care legislation (HR 3200) as nothing more than wording that "simply calls for the creation of a registry that would allow for the Department of Health and Human Services to collect data about medical devices 'used in or on a patient' (including devices which patients consent to have implanted with them during surgery, such as pacemakers) for purposes that include tracking the effectiveness and facilitating the distribution of manufacturer recall notices." (Notice snopes.com's overly verbose explanation and evasive multiuse of "including" but never "excluding" overreaching microchip uses and expansions. Remember that opening legislative doors and leaving them wide-open is the government's specialty.)
But if that section in HR 3200 referred only to a benign registry without universal and intrusive implications (including an ultimate obliteration of HIPAA laws), then why was that section excluded from or changed to "similar language" (per snopes.com) in the final version of Obamacare? And shall we assume that though every other form of government entitlement has expanded, these microchip-registry provisions never will be re-included or expanded in future amendments to federally mandated health care?
And I suppose it is also merely coincidental that Fox News recently reported — in an article titled "Microchips 'the future of medicine'" — that Veriteq, the company responsible for the current usage of informational microchips in pets, "was cleared by the FDA for patient identification in 2004 (via its VeriChip microchip). In 2009, the company entered into an agreement to implant its 8-milimeter microchip in Medcomp's vascular access catheters. ... After VeriChip is implanted, it can be scanned to reveal the identification number and checked in a database."
And if all of this is sounding a bit too close in this sacred Easter week to the epic and biblical "mark of the beast" (Revelation 16), without which people in the end times "cannot buy or sell," just know you'll be lumped among conspiratorial camps (like birthers) for suggesting that, too.
I don't care how the Obama administration or the Supreme Court bends the commerce clause of the Constitution; Obamacare is bad medicine for Americans' health care, households, rights and liberties and the American economy.
We need more government officials and a federal government that shift health care back to the free market, personal responsibility and local and community care for one another.
Follow Chuck Norris through his official social media sites, on Twitter @chucknorris and Facebook's "Official Chuck Norris Page." He blogs at http://chucknorrisnews.blogspot.com. To find out more about Chuck Norris and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
