Free Health Care!! (Just Don't Worry About the Taxes)

The race for the 2008 Democratic Nomination is already in full swing; so much so that the candidates aren't even trying to hold back their Socialist instincts. Hillary has the best outburst to date, as this past weekend she boldly stated that she wanted to "take [Oil Companies'] profits and [put] them into a strategic energy fund." Yikes, she wasn't even shy about it! She's going to take your f-ing money (because a company's profits, remember, go to its shareholders) and put it in a Government fund! And you will comply! One can only begin to imagine what other proposals Hillary has in store for us; but you can bet that one of them is her Socialized Medicine package. In desiring the Utopian 'Health Care for all' Senator Clinton is hardly alone. Indeed, none other than the ever-pandering John Edwards has come busting out of the gates brandishing the sword of sweeping Health Care socialization.

To his credit, Edwards, in a highly unusual move for him, has been somewhat honest and forthcoming about his Health Care proposals. On Sunday's Meet the Press, sandwiched in between his unfounded claims about the decaying state of American Health Care and the usual 'help the Middle Class' nonsense, the Sleezball extraordinaire admitted that "we'll have to raise taxes" to pay for his wonderful, 'free' Health Care plan.

The first thing that pops to my mind when contemplating the various things Edwards said Yesterday is the contradiction of his plea to "help middle-class families with [Health Care] costs" and his tax hike. Who exactly do higher taxes hurt the most? The wealthy can generally afford them. The poor generally don't pay them. So, who's left - yup, the middle class. If the Middle Class is already struggling to pay for private health insurance, it seems a bit illogical to solve that problem by raising their taxes and further disenabling their ability to purchase the said insurance. Consequently, to me, it seems that a better idea might be simply to lower taxes.

Of course, John Edwards doesn't want to lower taxes - for any class of people. He wants to raise them and create big government spending programs. He wants to do this because he is living in a warped reality were Government is the ultimate problem solver. He thinks that increasing government interference will make things better. Indeed, he believes that his new Health Care proposals will "create competition that doesn't exist today." What he fails to understand is that the competition that 'doesn't exist' nowadays, but which he is trying to create, is, in fact, no competition; and, honestly, no competition is a form of competition I'd rather not have.

Ultimately, this is the consequence of Government intervention: the destruction of competitive markets. Problem is, a competitive Health Care market is what creates outstanding Health Care systems.

Once (or shall I say, if) Mr. Edwards figures this out - he should pass the message along to Hillary.