We have written many times on this website that America’s wealthy ruling Media Class has no concern for the poor except as a tool for the advancement of its own social agenda. The Media Class, like all past ruling Classes, is relatively small in number – too small (and its agenda too narrow and unpopular) to win elections without attaching itself to a large political movement with a Leftist base. From the 1960’s onwards the Media Class has gradually reconstructed the Democrat Party and now has almost complete control over it. In the process it has worked to eliminate the Democrat Party’s private sector working class constituency. Many of these working people have transferred allegiance to the Republican Party whenever that Party has adopted a robust socially moral and patriotic program. The Media Class has rewarded with favorable publicity those doctrinaire Leftists who have driven working people out of the Democrat Party for working people are too conservative on Family issues. They are also too patriotic (Nationalist). What has emerged, sufficient to give the Democrat Party an appearance of working class identification, is a Union membership that is now almost entirely representative of the Public services. This is fine for the Media Class, for public service workers are natural supporters of a constant expansion of the Government’s role in the workplace and in the economy. The rank and file members of the public services are also easily ‘educated’ and mobilized by Leftists Union leaders since they owe their jobs to their Unions. The Democrat Party has, over the last few decades, almost purged the Party of all of its working Class moralists. In place of the lost traditional working Class members, the Democrat Party has been ‘gentrified’, padded with public sector Union members (especially teachers) and strident minorities seeking Government favoritism.
Health Care in the US is far from perfect, but then so is Health Care in any system. In the UK, where nationalized Health Care has existed since the Atlee-led Labour Party victory of 1945, the provision of medical services has steadily deteriorated and is now in constant crisis and regularly being ‘reformed’. Some of this steady deterioration is due to the malaise that always grows like cancer in any Government-run service where competition and profit are eliminated. However – and this is true of any ‘free’ provision – no system can avoid being overwhelmed by mass immigration. In the UK, when an illegal immigrant suffering from AIDS gets off a plane from Africa and is immediately admitted to hospital, someone else has to go to the back of a very long line. In the US, I have seen with my own eyes, whole hospital waiting rooms filled with illegal Latino girls and their babies, none of whom have ever paid a cent in insurance payments. Their medical costs are being met by the (high) insurance premiums of legitimate citizens. This greatly distorts the insurance system.
The US system, apart from the high insurance premiums, has much to commend it. It is doubtful that any health care system in the world is as advanced and plentiful. Most importantly for this writer, who has experienced nationalized health care, the patient is treated as a client and not as a welfare recipient. For many ordinary working people, it is possible to go direct to a Specialist of choice without having to negotiate through a gate-keeper. There is no waiting list for blood tests and X-rays. The problem of those who genuinely cannot afford medical insurance and have no employment health insurance needs addressing. So do the problems for those with pre-existing conditions who seek insurance. However, Americans would be wise to avoid throwing out the baby with Obama’s bathwater.
The Obama Health Care Bill is not a reforming Bill but a revolutionary attempt to replace America’s predominantly private system with a totalitarian Government-run health care program. The intent is to condemn all those who are currently insured (and thus empowered over their own health care) to the status of welfare recipients groaning under the oppression of a Government bureaucracy. This revolution in Health Care will be good for public sector Union leaders, for their Unions’ memberships will be swollen. It will also reinforce the ranks of those who are happy to depend on Government for care and who from then on will always vote for more of the same. Obama, Pelosi, Reid and the Union leaders are not driven by compassion for the poor and sick but by self-interest and ideology. They themselves will never take their places in the lines of those awaiting treatment or who are being denied treatment because of age, for they are assured of being in the privileged leader class that Socialism always spawns.
The Media Class members, also hugely privileged, will never be joining the long lines of patients awaiting treatment. Does anyone think that Barbra Streisand, David Letterman, Madonna, Stephen Spielberg or Tiger Woods will be next to them in a public hospital bed’ The Media Class, which will have no stake in nationalized health care, is currently using the Mainstream Media (MSM) to ram through Obama’s Bill for two reasons. The first and most urgent is that Obama and his comrades must survive politically in order to promote the revolutionary social/moral legislation that the Media Class is impatient for. The second is that expanded Government services provide the mechanism for more easily implementing the social/moral agenda. I will give examples of this.
It is difficult for Government to enforce the homosexual indoctrination of school children when those children are in private schools, especially if the schools are owned by religious bodies with a moral code. Sure, legislation can be passed that enforces homosexual indoctrination in private schools (and criminalizes home schooling) but it requires much work, faces popular opposition and has to be largely camouflaged. It is much easier to slip in through a nationalized education system. All it takes is for the President to appoint a ‘Safe Schools Czar’. Similarly it is easy to make abortion wholly and easily available and stigma-free when all medical services are Government run. Those medical workers who have qualms about abortion can be purged and new recruits vetted and ‘educated’.
The passage of Obama’s Health Care Bill can fairly be described as a shambles, exposing the Democrat Party as being divided between the majority of ideologues and a small minority of special interests. The latter have had to be bought out or threatened by Party leaders. An even smaller number of Representatives have been motivated against the Bill by the principled issue of abortion. These are the un-purged remnants of the old Party but they will certainly be purged by the ideologues and Soros-financed activists in the next election. Deadline after deadline has been set for the Bill’s passage and then trumpeted all across the Media and each deadline has been passed, but not the Bill. Now the Party has been forced to resort to unconstitutional schemes that may well be ruled unlawful by a Supreme Court. Obama has abandoned his vacation in order to help twist arms and still the Bill cannot get through. All this despite a genius in the White House and super majorities in Congress! A shambles, indeed!
Yet the Media is united as never before in portraying this unedifying spectacle as a heroic struggle by a leader facing great odds. This morning’s news bulletins were ecstatic when reporting that the Left extremist from Vermont had switched from a ‘no’ vote to a ‘yes’ vote after a plane ride with Obama himself. Every news bulletin on every radio station begins and ends with breathless reporting of the tortoise-speed progress (‘sprint’ – WSJ) towards a one-vote majority for the Bill. If that fails by Obama’s latest ‘deadline’ of Sunday, the ground has been prepared for the un-Constitutional alternative that will land a Bill on Obama’s desk for his signature. We can expect that the MSM will manage to make even that sound like a triumph.