If you have been a reader of NoSpeedBumps, thanks for stopping by and I hope that some things I have written here may have at times helped you in thinking about the world we live in.

I have enjoyed blogging at NoSpeedBumps and perhaps someday I will start another blog or website. For now I will be pursuing other interests.

Cheers,
Dan Morgan

However, many on the right are overreacting to certain aspects of the bill. For example, the idea that you must buy health insurance or else pay a penalty is not so bizarre. It is normal practice now that you must buy insurance to drive on the roads. And everyone must pay Social Security and Medicare taxes. Thus, these programs require your mandatory participation. The requirement to have health insurance will one day be mainstream thinking too. (Consider the alternative to achieving near universal coverage: a single-payer government-run system like in Canada and Europe.)

In fact, the idea that you must buy health insurance or pay a fee is a Republican idea:

WASHINGTON – Republicans were for President Barack Obama’s requirement that Americans get health insurance before they were against it. The obligation in the new health care law is a Republican idea that’s been around at least two decades. It was once trumpeted as an alternative to Bill and Hillary Clinton’s failed health care overhaul in the 1990s. These days, Republicans call it government overreach.

Mitt Romney, weighing another run for the GOP presidential nomination, signed such a requirement into law at the state level as Massachusetts governor in 2006. At the time, Romney defended it as “a personal responsibility principle” and Massachusetts’ newest GOP senator, Scott Brown, backed it. Romney now says Obama’s plan is a federal takeover that bears little resemblance to what he did as governor and should be repealed.

Also, ObamaCare will push 16 million more poor people on to medical welfare (Medicaid). Where is the concern about increasing welfare dependency? Did we learn nothing from the 1994 bi-partisan welfare reform to make welfare more restrictive?

This health care reform bill is perhaps the single biggest government power grab in US history. It will be challenged on so many fronts, that I will be surprised if it survives. But then, the window of time for repeal is narrow. Like all new entitlement programs, once people are addicted - they can never be repealed.