Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid secured the pivotal vote in the Senate at 1:17 am on Dec. 21 by buying enough votes to pass the bill. This was not an example of a Constitutional Democracy in which the Senators voted the will of the people, but an example of open corruption that makes the already tottering federal government look more illegitimate. The constitutionality of the bill has been questioned as never before have US citizens been forced to buy a product because they are citizens.

One of the methods of insuring additional people will be through the expansion of Medicaid and those states that held out will get assistance from other states to pay it:

• Sen. Ben Nelson voted for the bill when his state of Nebraska was given a 100% exemption on any rise in Medicaid, forever, at the expense of the other 49 states.
• Sen. Mary Landrieu was given $300 million in extra Medicaid funding for Louisiana.
• Vermont will receive $250 million in Medicaid funding.
• Florida got exempted from Medicaid advantage cuts that will affect the rest of the country.

At the last minute, Sen. Chris Dodd received a $100 million earmark for a hospital at the University of Connecticut.

These are just a few of the examples of redistribution that will use the force of federal law to take money from some states and give it to others. In addition, the budget figures were fabricated to provide the illusion that the bill will not hasten federal bankruptcy, or rampant inflation. Ten years of revenues were “balanced” against six years of spending–meaning that four year’s of payments were omitted from the budget. Democratic Budget Chairman Kent Conrad called it a ponzi scheme.

The bill forces Americans to buy insurance or pay a penalty to the IRS and eventually jail time for failing to pay taxes and penalties.

The bill forces small businesses to become third party payers or face penalties, creating the likelihood of causing businesses to fail and unemployment to rise. Since third party payers destroy natural market incentives, insurance prices are likely to continue to rise.

This bill helps guarantee large medical providers, drug companies, and insurance companies with substantial federal lobbies their payments by forcing responsible American citizens to pay for the bills of irresponsible ones. It will help create a culture of irresponsibility that will further hasten federal bankruptcy. Follow the money; notice how healthcare stocks responded. Here’s a quick breakdown of major health company stock performance from Oct. 27 to last Friday’s market close:

• Coventry Health Care, Inc. is up 31.6 percent;
• CIGNA Corp. is up 29.1 percent;
• Aetna Inc. is up 27.1 percent;
• WellPoint, Inc. is up 26.6 percent;
• UnitedHealth Group Inc. is up 20.5 percent;
• Humana Inc. is up 13.6 percent.

According to a study by Northwestern University’s Medill News Service, 13 former congressmen and 166 Congressional staffers were actively engaged in lobbying their former colleagues on the bill. The companies they were working for—some 338 of them—spent $635 million on lobbying. It was extremely effective—delivering a bill that, by forcing people to buy a shoddy product in a market with no real competition, enshrines into law the public subsidy of private profit.

The bill gives additional authority to ration Medicare services that the elderly rely on and therefore a form of legal euthanasia of retired people without substantial savings.

When all is said and done it will only reduce the number of uninsured from 41 million to 23 million Americans, leaving the same basic system intact but just more complicated, expensive, and unjust.

The bill will provide employment to a host of new federal employees and agencies that will receive healthcare packages from the federal government and increase the tax burden on citizens.

This bill is the antithesis of the founding principles of the United States in which people would be free to pursue life, liberty, and happiness as they see fit. It defies the 10th Amendment by giving power to the federal government not enumerated in the Constitution. It violates the principle of fairness to the states by circumventing apportioned taxes, and instead taxes each person based on how much can be extracted from him without putting him on welfare. It violates the role of the federal government to provide military defense and coordinate interstate commerce, by providing social welfare, which is explicitly the role of the individual states.

In summary, this bill is plan of the Washington Nomenklatura to profit at the expense of citizens in the name of doing some good. This is not good governance but the epitome of corruption. It rewards bad behavior, sloth and selfishness, and penalizes responsible and unselfish behavior. The true role of government is to create ordered liberty and justice. This bill creates dysfunction and injustice.

Constitutionally, all health care is under the responsibility of individual states, and the principle of subsidiary that I explain in Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, Version 4.0 might relegate it to the county level. However, given the massive injustice that has occurred, perhaps you can call your Democratic Senators and ask why they sold you out to Vermont, Nebraska, Louisiana, and Connecticut. Why didn’t they stand up and ask for their fair share for their own constituents if that was their game-plan? At least if they are going to vote for an unconstitutional bill, it should at least be fair to their own constituents.