Government Unlimited, Inc.

“Obamacare was a big lie. You can keep your doctor? Lie. You can keep your plan? Lie. It was a lie, directly from the president. Twenty-eight times, he said it. Twenty-eight times. It was a lie and he knew it was, and now it is hurting this country irreparably.”--President Trump, telling the truth

Sen. Rand Paul:

"Some say Republicans must act or lose their majority in Congress, and that it is political suicide to do nothing. I say it is worse to do the wrong thing.

If Republicans accept, as they appear to, the Democrats’ premise that the federal government has the prerogative to subsidize a private industry, there is no end to the mischief that may yet occur.

“New car prices are too high,” they will cry. Why not a new car stabilization fund to bring down car prices?

And on and on. Now that there is virtually no Republican opposition to government intervention in the marketplace, how long until capitalism withers away or is stamped out by Republocrats?

Some say Republicans must act even if the bill is not that good; we must act or risk losing our majority. But would it be worth it after all, after knowing Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, to simply act for action’s sake but forfeit our liberty’s soul in the process?

 

The last remaining vestige of the freedom-loving soul, the dying embers of belief in the marketplace, will expire before our very eyes.

Upon this crucible, this false hope of cheap insurance through massive subsidies, burn the beliefs that made America great.

The freedom of exchange, the freedom of choice implicit in free transactions, is consumed by this bill. With a whimper of defeat, capitalism is cast off without a second thought.

It is not really so much about the loss of prosperity that comes from central planning, though  there will without question be a loss of prosperity as the Obamacare philosophy slowly ebbs its way into every corner of the marketplace.

 

If we are to subsidize health insurance, why not food? Or water? Or housing? You may respond, yes, but we already do that. You are right we have subsidized, for the poor, food and housing, but we didn’t, until now, attempt to subsidize a market item for all.

 

With this bill, Senate Republicans declare they have overcome Hayek’s protestations about the pretense of knowledge — the idea that no central planner can know enough to engineer an economy successfully.

With this bill, Senate Republicans declare they have the knowledge to determine and correct prices for millions of Americans who purchase health insurance. Pretense? You bet it is.

 

Markets are incredibly complex interactions between millions of people in a nearly simultaneous bazaar of trading. No one man or woman possesses that knowledge, so anyone who sets or attempts to set prices for health insurance is doomed to fail.

 

And mark my words, this Senate Healthcare bill will fail just as its twin Obamacare has, for they suffer from the same pretense of knowledge. No one is smart enough to plan even the simplest of marketplace prices — no matter how much data is available.

The Soviet Union failed for one simple reason: they could not determine the correct price of bread. Instead of allowing demand to intersect with supply to distribute the greatest amount of bread to the most amount of people, the Soviets decided upon a moral price as determined by a dictatorship of the proletariat.

 

The results are now history — look it up. Sometimes the politburo guessed a price for bread too high, and the bread rotted on store shelves. Sometimes the politburo guessed a price too low, and the shelves were bare of bread. The people, though, learned quickly. Without even knowing of Friedrich Hayek’s pretense of knowledge they learned that an abundance of bread existed whenever and wherever the black market or freedom existed. Because the black market was that place where demand met supply, and prices were democratically determined by capitalism.

Some estimate more than a third of the Soviet GDP came from the freedom of black markets.

 

If only the Senate had a notion of knowledge or history, they would reject Obamacare. The Senate would dispel any pretense to special planning skills. The Senate would evict the notion of centralized planning and show sufficient confidence in freedom.".......  

He's right, of course--and probably a hundred years too late.

The Federalist: "Senate leadership will only move to a vote on the 2015 repeal bill—which some conservative groups have argued for—if it knows it will fail."

Kimberly Strassel:

"The House bill isn’t perfect—no bill ever is—but it amounts to the biggest entitlement reform in history. It repeals crushing taxes. It dramatically cuts spending. And it begins the process of stabilizing the individual health-care market and expanding consumer freedom.
None of this is good enough for a handful of senators, so now it’s time to make this exercise all about them. Mr. McConnell should make clear that the overwhelming majority of the Republican Party stands ready to make good on its repeal-and-replace campaign promise—and that it would have done so already were it not for a cynical or egotistic few. It’s time for some very public accountability.
That rests in Mr. McConnell giving his caucus a drop-dead date to broker a compromise, after which he will proceed to bring up the House bill. And any Republican who votes against moving forward, “a motion to proceed,” will forever be known as the Republican who saved ObamaCare. The Republican who voted to throw billions more taxpayer dollars at failing entitlement programs and collapsing insurance markets. The Republican who abandoned struggling American families. The Republican who voted against a tax cut and spending reductions. The Republican who made Chuck Schumer’s year.
And that’s only a short list of the real-world accountability.".......

End Their Illegal Exemption, Mr. President