By: Fred Johnson

Last September, during the presidential campaign, our local Democrat Party Chairman wrote that she knew of a Republican couple who were considering voting for Obama because they were in business for themselves and the cost of their personal health insurance was high and getting free health insurance from the government would be nice.
    I responded with a column. “Be careful what you wish for,” where I pointed out that Obama’s health insurance would be paid for by businesses and if the business did not provide the insurance, they would pay a health insurance tax as part of their payroll taxes.
    I further opined that the government mandated health insurance would surely be the “mother of all health insurance plans” and in addition to medical expenses the health insurance might also be required to pay for psychiatric care, drug rehab, abortions and sex change operations.  I thought I painted a pretty dark picture of government run healthcare, but the healthcare bill making its way through Congress is even worse.
    Yes it does mandate that businesses pay for healthcare for their employees and the health insurance tax is 8 percent if they fail to do so; and yes the health care bill does cover abortions and sex change operations. What I called the “mother of all health insurance plans” is called a “qualified” plan in the legislation.
    But the bill also requires you to prove to the IRS every year that you have a “qualified” health insurance plan, fines you thousands of dollars if you don’t and enrolls you randomly in a government approved plan. It requires elderly people to have mandatory meetings every five years with a government bureaucrat to discuss end of life issues (No you can’t have heart surgery; take these pills and report to a hospice).
    Medical decisions will no longer be made by you and your doctor, but by a bureaucrat who must approve of your treatment plan. Liberals like to declare that healthcare is a basic human right.
    But the government does not issue rights-- As our Declaration of Independence so eloquently puts it, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”   
    A mandatory government run healthcare system with fines, penalties and mandates is not a right; it actually tramples on citizens’ rights.
    I believe that my advice to “Be careful what you wish for” could be amended to “Be careful who you vote for, you may get more than you wished for.”
    Fred Johnson is a member of the Morgan County Republican Party.