Doug Wilson's Letter From America

Obamacare and Seven Layers of Failure

Culture and Politics - Obama Nation Building
Written by Douglas Wilson
Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Some might believe that it is premature to pronounce Obamacare a failure, since the president has only just signed it. Why, some might wonder, shouldn't we give it a chance? There is no need to give it a chance -- it has already failed in seven significant ways.

First, the Bible says not to steal. I have quoted Margaret Thatcher on this before. As she put it, the problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money, and this aphorism highlights two of the problems. But the moral problem is foremost, the part that sees that this racket depends on "other people's money." No benefit can be given to one person without it being first removed from another person. What is the basis of the removal? We threaten that other person with jail time in order to extract a sufficient amount of money from him. It is not a "contribution." In order to defend Obamacare, you have to be in favor of raw extortion at raw levels. This is a moral failure, and the difficulty that many professed Christians have in seeing it as a moral failure represents an even deeper level of moral failure.

Then there is the simple math. You cannot add millions of beneficiaries, accept pre-existing conditions, along with other forms of magic, and then reduce the costs. This is a failure in basic arithmetic, and since the people telling us all this are not that stupid, we could chalk this up as yet another sampling of the moral failure. But let us cut some slack and call it a failure in telling bigger numbers and smaller numbers apart.

Third, the passage of this bill represents a significant political failure. First, there was the failure of the voting public to believe Obama's campaign promises -- he said he would do this and, son of gun, he did. The public also failed to disbelieve a supine press. And once it became apparent that he was actually going to ram through what the overwhelming majority of the American people did not want, our elected representatives failed to listen to their constituents. So we failed to examine our candidates, and our candidates, upon assuming office, failed to listen. This is a major breakdown; it represents an enormous political failure.

Fourth, at the macro-level, this means national bankruptcy. The arithmetic failure mentioned earlier would be operative even if one congressman could not tell whether $25 was larger or smaller than $50. The consequences of arithmetic failure are catastrophic or not, depending on where the decimal point goes. If all of Congress cannot tell the difference between 25 trillion and 50 trillion, this means that at a certain point, default becomes inevitable. This means economic failure.

The fifth way this represents failure is a bit different from the others. All the others represent failure for the nation. This particular point is simply failure for the Democrats, which means, in its turn, that if the Democrats have in fact over-topped themselves, the other forms of failure may yet be undone. So if this is true failure, the others aren't. If the others are, then this isn't. That said, Obamacare is a tactical failure on the part of the Democrats.

Think of it this way. If McCain had been elected, it is quite possible that we would have gotten a bill very much like the one we just got, and there would have been real bipartisan support for it. As it is, not a single Republican in either chamber voted for this monstrosity, and the opposition to it is now enthusiastic and fired up, and will have no patience with "moderate" Republicans in the middle. Repeal of the bill is actually a possibility, and if that happens the whole thing will have been a major miscalculation on the part of the progressives, who were guilty of impatient over-reaching -- grabbing what lapdog Republicans would have helped them obtain more slowly. But now the lines are drawn pretty starkly. This represents a tactical failure, and is the only failure in this list that I like.

Sixth, oh, yeah, this was supposed to be a health care bill. A finite resource like medical care is like pie dough -- the farther you spread it, the thinner it gets. In a free market, an increased demand will lead to an increase in supply. In the world we are proposing to enter, we have attempted to sever supply from demand. It will therefore be easier for ankle surgery panels (and death panels) to just say no than to pressure Congress to raise taxes yet again. The quality of care for most will go down, and the expenses will go up. We will be paying a lot more for a lot less, which means that this constitutes a first-class medical failure

And last, the fact that I have written a goodish bit on this health care business does not represent an abandonment of first principles. Politics is no savior -- and if politics were our savior, we now see what a tawdry, dishonest, skulking, mendacious savior it is. It is a lifeguard who cannot swim. It is a contagious and disease-ridden surgeon. It is an accountant who can't count. It is a carpenter who doesn't believe in nails. This is government of the ninnyhammers, by the ninnyhammers, for the ninnyhamers.

But for those who worship man, this is the way it has to be. The passage of this bill is therefore a religious failure; it is worship failure. The Democrats are now heading out to the countryside to prove their case, trying to sell the bill to the bumpkins. These soi disant priests of Baal will set up a boom box on the park bench (right next to the census van with the free balloons), and give us a lame little dance, trying to cut themselves with table knives. The pagan gods couldn't answer with fire back when it was a real altar and real knives -- still less will they answer now. These folks don't need fire to fall from heaven; they need money to fall from heaven, and lots of it. And, said the fellow who has read too much economics, this is unlikely.

The only real alternative for us is to worship Jesus Christ, who is the only true Savior. Our response to all this must not be limited to a truncated civic activity -- letters, calls, signing, voting, that kind of thing. All lawful and appropriate, of course, but utterly inadequate in themselves to the need of the hour.

Our response to this must occur on a seven-day cycle -- every Lord's Day, we and our families need to assemble before the Lord and worship Him, cry out to Him, sing praise to Him, and feed on His Word while submitting ourselves to that Word. And why? "For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king; he will save us" (Is. 33:22).