AB 1400’s defeat is a victory for freedom and health care – Orange County Register

The libertarian Isabel Paterson wrote: “Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by chance, negligence or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered by them, that they wish to be motivated by lofty ideals towards virtuous ends. “

It’s an excerpt from Paterson’s 1943 book, “The God of the Machine.” It was the opening of a chapter titled, “Humanity with the Guillotine.”

Paterson guides readers through the thought process and methods of leading good people to act on a bad premise, to support policies that have brought the world into “a time when millions were slaughtered, when investigating Tons were made, famine was enforced, oppression introduced a policy, as it is in a large part of the world, and it has often happened in the past. “

She identifies this motive in “humanitarian” thinking: “Humanitarian wants to be the main driving force in other people’s lives. He cannot admit either divinity or the natural order, whereby man has the right to help himself”.

Humanitarians quickly ran into the problem that “the person in authority did not need his help” and that most people “didn’t want to be ‘doing good’ by the humanitarian.”

That’s what happened at the California Conference last week. Radical activists who want to impose one-payer health care for the entire population of the state, and who have worked hard over the years to elect enough progressive lawmakers The department to obtain supermajority control, anti-veto over the Legislature, watched in horror and distrust as Congressional Bill 1400 was withdrawn from the floor without a vote on it finally qualifies for review this year.

AB 1400 will abolish private health insurance and Medicare in California. It would put everyone in the same health plan, run by the state and paid for with large tax increases on businesses and income.

AB 1400’s author, Representative Ash Kalra, D-San Jose, was riled up by the California Democratic Party’s Radical Caucus, which threatened Democratic lawmakers with losing the endorsement of the California Democratic Party. party – and the campaign cash that goes with it – if they voted against the bill.

But Kalra said the bill was “double digits” short of the 41 votes needed to pass. “I don’t believe it will serve the cause of taking the sole payer to do it by voting and setting it on fire and alienating members even more,” he explained to supporters. on a Zoom call later that day.

The question that needs to be answered, before the state and country waste any more time on this proposal, is: Why is it engulfed in flames?

The answer was determined by Isabel Paterson. “The humanitarian organization’s plan is unworkable,” she wrote. “The goal is to do good to others as a primary justification for existence; means is the strength of the collective; and the premise that ‘good’ is collectivity. “

But when “the goal is to do good to others as the primary justification for existence,” what exactly is each person supposed to do? “A will do what he thinks is good for B, and B does what he thinks is good for A? Or does A accept only what he considers good for B and vice versa? But that makes no sense. Of course what the humanitarian really suggested was that he would do what he thought was good for the people. It is at this time that humanity sets up the guillotine”.

In the single-payer health care system, the first “slash” is for the government to cut payments to health care providers. We’ve seen this in Medi-Cal, where reimbursements are so low that many doctors limit the number of Medi-Cal patients they see, or refuse to accept Medi-Cal patients. The low reimbursement rate disguises the true cost of the plan, which is passed on to others through higher costs or longer wait times for care.

A second “guillotine” is a government cut to services available, either generally or for specific types of patients. While not exactly a “table of death”, a panel of government appointees determines the standard of care and since the government is the “single payer”, that is all you have can be received, no matter where you go, anywhere in the state. We have seen during the COVID-19 pandemic the exact mechanism by which government “guidelines” control what doctors can do for their patients. Some treatments are allowed and others are prohibited. But how are these decisions made? Sometimes, look for “arrest rules,” maybe on a rainy night when you’re looking to read a horror story.