Another Version of Reform that Does Not Empower the State

I still can't get over the fact that one has to argue that alternatives which do not require the expansion of federal power are, a priori, preferable to those that would. It must have something to do with how the debate has been framed the last 50+ years - "we need the govt to protect those who cannot help themselves and those who oppose this are selfish and ignore the needy."

http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/18/news/economy/obamacare_alternative.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009081905

I frame it:
- give the government the power to hand out health care and we are all dependents of our state, vice those who are entitled to the State's defense of our rights.
- the State has proved it cannot manage large, long term entitlement programs (social security, medicare); why would we believe it can manage the rest of the health care given when it is already failing with the 40% it is currently responsible for?
- State monopoly on health care leads to rationing and 'death panels' like night leads to day. There is no alternative. "What is the demand for health care when the cost at the point of delivery is zero?" Infinite. Thus, health care will be rationed - by political values. The connected will get Ted Kennedy level care - the rest of us will get 'what the State can afford.'

Again from the article: "It will not matter if democratic processes lead us to this destination. As noted above, the making of the welfare state has been from the very beginning a matter of corrupt vote-buying and patronage-dispensing by politicians — democracy in action.

"And one sad servitude alike denotes The slave that labours and the slave that votes.[29]"

We can have a free society or a welfare state. We cannot have both."