Healthcare Reform is More Corporate Welfare

Each week Ron Paul pens a new essay which he calls his Texas Straight Talk column. He reads it aloud and posts it as a message at a toll free phone number at 877-322-1414 - It is my Monday morning ritual.

This weeks column is entitled "Healthcare Reform is More Corporate Welfare"

It is a classic Ron Paul overview that cuts through the bull and dissects the Health Care reform for what it really is... more Corporate Welfare and another highway to nowhere of big government multi trillion dollar blunders. If more people took more time to listen to Ron Paul and roust their own Congresspeople to follow Ron's example, the Government would be very small with the highest efficient output for what The Constitution prescribes.

I hope you find Ron Paul's essay below, Healthcare Reform is More Corporate Welfare, to be worth your time.

Greg Chamberlain for The President at ThePresident.Com

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Healthcare Reform is More Corporate Welfare
by Ron Paul - Medical Doctor and United States Congressman

Last Wednesday (September 9, 2009) the nation was riveted to the President’s speech on healthcare reform before Congress. While the President’s concern for the uninsured is no doubt sincere, his plan amounts to a magnanimous gift to the health insurance industry, despite any implications to the contrary.

For decades the insurance industry has been lobbying for mandated coverage for everyone. Imagine if the cell phone industry or the cable TV industry received such a gift from government? If government were to fine individuals simply for not buying a corporation’s product, it would be an incredible and completely unfair boon to that industry, at the expense of freedom and the free market. Yet this is what the current healthcare reform plans intend to do for the very powerful health insurance industry.

The stipulation that pre-existing conditions would have to be covered seems a small price to pay for increasing their client pool to 100�f the American people. A big red flag, however, is that they would also have immunity from lawsuits, should they fail to actually cover what they are supposedly required to cover, so these requirements on them are probably meaningless. Mandates on all citizens to be customers of theirs, however, are enforceable with fines and taxes.

Insurance providers seem to have successfully equated health insurance with health care but this is a relatively new concept. There were doctors and medicine long before there was health insurance. Health insurance is not a bad thing, but it is not the only conceivable way to get health care. Instead, we seem to still rely on the creativity and competence of politicians to solve problems, which always somehow seem to be tied in with which lobby is the strongest in Washington.

It is sad to think of the many creative, free market solutions that government prohibits with all its interference. What if instead of joining a health insurance plan, you could buy a membership directly from a hospital or doctor? What if a doctor wanted to have a cash-only practice, or make house calls, or determine his or her own patient load, or otherwise practice medicine outside the constraints of the current bureaucratic system? Alternative healthcare delivery models will be at an even stronger competitive disadvantage if families are forced to buy into the insurance model. And yet, the reforms are sold to us as increasing competition.

What if just once Washington got out of the way and allowed the ingenuity of the American people to come up with a whole spectrum of alternatives to our broken system? Then the free market, not lobbyists and politicians, would decide which models work and which did not.

Unfortunately, the most broken aspect of our system is that Washington sees the need to act on every problem in society, rather than staying out of the way, or getting out of the way. The only tools the government has are force and favors. These are tools that many unscrupulous and lazy corporations would like to wield to their own advantage, rather than simply providing a better product that people will willingly buy. It seems the health insurance industry will get more of those advantages very soon.

Peter Schiff for Senate - The dollar breaking down, gold breaking out, 9/9/09 moneybomb

Government Solutions Lack Understanding - By Congressman Ron Paul

Government Solutions Lack Understanding
by United States Congressman Ron Paul
September 9, 2009

Things seem to be unraveling quickly for the new administration. The latest unemployment numbers are worse than the last reports. For all the billions of dollars spent and committed to fixing our economic problems, the situation is only getting worse. This was to be expected by those who understand the root causes of the problems. Throwing money around and creating more government programs is both simplistic and damaging to the economy. Of course, the administration claims that we would have been much worse off without these efforts. You can’t improve this situation by adding to our mountain of public debt for the benefit of big banks and other special interests. The American people know this. When will Washington learn?

In addition, the president’s plans for healthcare reform – or health insurance reform - are becoming more and more unpopular as details are examined. But because of all the alarmist rhetoric, politicians in Washington feel obligated to pass something, even if it doesn’t help. Rarely are liberty and prosperity at greater risk than when politicians feel they must “do something”. It is frightening to watch Washington toy with our healthcare purely for political reasons.

However, the saddest shortcoming of this administration is its utter failure to pursue a more peaceful foreign policy. Just last week up to 90 people, apparently mostly civilians, were killed in Afghanistan in an airstrike, and the violence is only getting worse. The administration is mulling over how many more troops they will send as part of their “Afghan Surge” with advisors getting it exactly backwards. They qualify sending fewer troops as “high-risk” and sending more troops as “low-risk”. This is not the perception at all if you were to ask the families of those being sent over. The best answer would be to stop risking any of our troops for the sake of what is, for all intents and purposes, a violent occupation, helping no one.

But all of these problems and their wrong-headed solutions come from one greater problem - which is not understanding the reasons that we are here. The economy is in bad shape because of too much government intervention producing a myriad of unintended consequences and perverse incentives. Healthcare is broken because the doctor-patient relationship has been broken down by hyper regulation and too much government interference. Afghanistan is a mess because they ignored the mission approved by Congress - to seek out those who attacked us on 9/11. They have instead gotten sidetracked with nebulous interventionist tasks such as promoting democracy and nation building. Eight years later, there is no real progress. The Soviets bankrupted themselves fighting in the mountains and caves of Afghanistan and we’re about to do the same. If we would just look to history it would be self-evident that there is nothing left to win in Afghanistan, and everything to lose.

Most of all, we need to understand that we don’t understand Afghan culture and politics, and for that reason alone, intervening in their affairs is unlikely to produce positive results. The best thing we could possibly do now is to bring our troops home, from Afghanistan, from Iraq, from Japan, from Germany, from all occupied countries, and concentrate on mending badly damaged relationships around the world. Free and honest trade has always been the best way to do that, without fail. Not understanding the benefits of peace, freedom, and nonintervention will always bring about catastrophe.

Campaign for Liberty at http://www.campaignforliberty.com was spawned by the grass roots movement of Ron Paul following his Presidential run in 2008. Today, Campaign for Liberty has thousands of members worldwide who are working for a common cause of true freedom and liberty.

Girl gets creative to raise money for college to study International Law and Politics. Hopes to become Diplomat.

We came across this very funny video of a very beautiful girl, Alia Intably, who is American, but grew up as a child in Lebanon and survived the ravages of war in her country. She is one who does not qualify for financial aid to go to school to study International Law and Politics, so she made a website at http://www.Intably.com and produced this funny video to bring attention to her fund raising efforts. I have a funny feeling that if she puts her mind to it, she could end wars.

We applaud her efforts and hope that all who are able will donate to her educational fund.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5lzkMvwRJ8

The Limits of Force - Iraq and Afghanistan Aren't Ours to Win or Lose - by Chuck Hagel

Former Senator Chuck Hagel from Nebraska wrote a commentary in the Washington Post. Read the whole piece at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/02/AR2009090202856.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

The Limits of Force - Iraq and Afghanistan Aren't Ours to Win or Lose
By Chuck Hagel

The implosion of the Soviet Union and a historic diffusion of economic and geopolitical power created new influences and established new global power centers -- and new threats. The events of Sept. 11, 2001, shocked America into this reality. The Sept. 11 commission pointed out that the attacks were as much about failures of our intelligence and security systems as about the terrorists' success.

The U.S. response, engaging in two wars, was a 20th-century reaction to 21st-century realities. These wars have cost more than 5,100 American lives; more than 35,000 have been wounded; a trillion dollars has been spent, with billions more departing our Treasury each month. We forgot all the lessons of Vietnam and the preceding history.


No country today has the power to impose its will and values on other nations. As the new world order takes shape, America must lead by building coalitions of common interests, as we did after World War II. Then, international organizations such as the United Nations, NATO, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and GATT (now the World Trade Organization) -- while flawed -- established boundaries for human and government conduct and expectations that helped keep the world from drifting into World War III and generally made life better for most people worldwide during the second half of the 20th century.

Read the rest at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/02/AR2009090202856.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Video of Ron Paul Speech at Loyola University September 2, 2009

Here is another great speech by Congressman Ron Paul at Loyola University in New Orleans made on September 2, 2009. The footage is a bit jittery, but the speech is classic Ron Paul as he covers ALL the bases. Most importantly, he discusses the terrible way in which America has gone to war each time since World War II.

Part I



Part II



Part III



Part IV



Part V



Part VI