In a great article written in response to the passage of the health care bill last week, Thomas Sowell argued that perhaps the biggest problem with a government controlled health care system is the inherent threat to privacy.
The same argument can be made regarding increased government involvement in any area of life, including financial matters and banking, even if such intrusions are done in the name of “righteous goals” such as stopping tax evaders.
Even the massive transfer of crucial decisions from millions of doctors and patients to Washington bureaucrats and advisory panels — as momentous as that is — does not measure the full impact of this largely unread and certainly unscrutinized legislation. If the current legislation does not entail the transmission of all our individual medical records to Washington, it will take only an administrative regulation or, at most, an executive order of the president to do that.
With politicians now having not only access to our most confidential records, but also the power to grant or withhold medical care needed to sustain ourselves or our loved ones, how many people will be bold enough to criticize our public servants, who will in fact have become our public masters?
Despite whatever “firewalls” or “lockboxes” there may be to shield our medical records from prying political eyes, nothing is as inevitable as leaks in Washington. Does anyone still remember the hundreds of confidential FBI files that were “accidentally” delivered to the White House during Bill Clinton’s administration?
Even before that, J. Edgar Hoover’s extensive confidential FBI files on numerous Washington power holders made him someone who could not be fired by any president of the United States, much less by any attorney general, nominally his boss.
The corrupt manner in which this massive legislation was rammed through Congress — without any of the committee hearings or extended debates that most landmark legislation has had — has provided a roadmap for pushing through more such sweeping legislation in utter defiance of what the public wants.
Too many critics of the Obama administration have assumed that its arrogant disregard of the voting public will spell political suicide for congressional Democrats and for the president himself. But that is far from certain. http://article.nationalreview.com/428968/point-of-no-return/thomas-sowell
