“I Believe in the Greatness of America”

Speech by Chance Gibson

The Memphis TEA Party

July 2, 2009

 

Ladies and gentlemen, the healthcare reform legislation currently being discussed in Washington is the single largest encroachment on your Constitutional Rights attempted by the federal government since the founding of our Republic.  I recognize that in some circles this is a rather inflammatory statement to make, but I believe it to be absolutely true.  The discussion over a nationalized (or more accurately socialized) healthcare system is about much more than just healthcare, because once the government controls healthcare, it can inject itself into virtually every single aspect of your life, because virtually everything you do can be said to affect your health.  The government will then “allow” you certain guidelines.  What doctor we get to see?  What you eat?  How you live?  Do you exercise?  Privacy is out the window… Do you have kids? Did your mother have breast cancer?  Did your brother have stroke?  These all become relevant intrusions for the government to commit, because they determine how, when, and where you will be treated, the kind of treatment they will allow, and eventually they will seek to control behavior based on “healthcare costs”.  In the UK it is now illegal to eat while driving your car, because it could cause an accident and the “state” doesn’t want to incur the medical bills caused by an accident.  As parents say to their children, “as long as you live under my roof, you will live by my rules”.  Only, in this scenario, the role of the parent is played by the federal government, and WE are the children.

 

This is not to say that the current healthcare is perfect, or that reform isn’t badly needed.  It isn’t perfect, and significant reform is needed.  And, the reform that IS needed is for government to remove itself from the equation and allow the free-market to create the best solutions. 

I’m going to need some audience participation… but it’s requires not expertise in healthcare, and you won’t need to come up on stage.  By a show of hands, who enjoys going to the DMV or the tax office?  By a show of hands, do you usually have a good experience while you’re there?  I’m just spit-balling here, but I suspect the number of hands would be about the same in any crowd I asked that question.  The question then becomes, why would anyone EVER want to put the same group of bureaucrats in charge of your healthcare?   In a recent healthcare debate, I actually heard Dr. Sidney Woolfe (who is an advocate of socialized medicine and considered an expert by the current administration) say that government control of healthcare would provide efficiency in healthcare delivery that the private-sector can’t match.  For those of you that may be replaying what I just said in your head wondering if you heard it correctly, I’ll repeat it.  Government control will provide efficiency in healthcare that the private-sector can’t match.  Ahhh, poor old Sid… someone please add him to your Secret Santa list under the category of: needs a dictionary/thesaurus, because he is clearly confused by the meaning of the word efficiency.  Is there ANYONE who actually believes the government does anything efficiently, expect spend your hard earned money?  Upon hearing that statement, you can stop listening to Ol’ Sid.  If his plan rests on government being efficient, you know all you need to know.

What are the roots of the problem?  When did it start getting out of control?  This is the question I never hear asked and therefore never answered.  20, 30, 40 years ago, how did we survive?  Before the government became involved, what did we do?  And why are we now in “crisis”?  The answer is quite simple.  Government injected itself into the healthcare industry artificially altering the marketplace, and the rest as they say is history.  If you examine the rise in healthcare related expenditures in this country, you will find that ground zero for the explosive increase in costs was the rise of Medicare/Medicaid and HMO legislation.  This took payment for service out of the hands of the patient and moved it to a third party, be that the government or an insurance company.  It also placed treatment decisions in the hands of bean-counters rather than doctors.  Doctors must now treat patients the way the government/insurance company mandates, or they will not be reimbursed.  In one fell-swoop, YOU and your personal physician were no longer in charge of YOUR healthcare.  To put this into perspective, wives in the audience- would you place $200 in your husband’s hands, and without providing him a detailed list, send him to the grocery store to purchase what is needed for the entire family for a week?  Husbands in the audience- would YOU place $500 in your wife’s hands, and without a specific list, send her to Bass Pro Shops to purchase your fishing gear?  And those analogies are of groceries and fishing tackle.  We’re talking about the United States healthcare system and your freedom and liberty as Americans.  This my friends is a recipe for disaster, and there is only one true solution to avert this disaster… put the patient and the doctor back in charge!!! 

Another element contributing to the explosive rise in healthcare costs that cannot be over-estimated is malpractice litigation.  Malpractice litigation drives up costs on two fronts.  Frivolous lawsuits against doctors have a direct impact of increasing physician visits because the physician must recoup the money spent on malpractice insurance which can be upwards of $75,000 range annually per physician.  The larger cost is more insidious.  In order to avoid potential litigation, physicians will order multiple costly tests to confirm, re-confirm, and then re-confirm the re-confirmation so that in the event a complication occurs they have documentation ad infinitum to support their decision.  This causes massive costs increases across the entire healthcare system.  Significant tort reform MUST be a part of any meaningful healthcare reform. 

Just for a moment, let us briefly look at what is currently being proposed in Washington to “fix” healthcare.  $1.6 trillion dollars!  That’s the first estimate to cover only 1/3 of those claimed to be currently uninsured.  We must spend over $1 trillion to save money… only in Washington could that statement be made with a straight-face.  And, have you ever known a government program to come in under budget?  President Reagan once said, “government is an alimentary canal with an insatiable appetite on one end and no sense of responsibility on the other.”  Never has that been a more accurate description.  Just for the discussion, let’s just run with $1.6 trillion dollars for a second.  No one can really fathom $1 trillion dollars.  So, let’s think of it another way.  What if $1 = 1 second, how long ago was one trillion seconds.  Well, it was approximately 31,709 years ago—Neanderthal man was just becoming extinct. 

Knowing the numbers and how we arrived at the crossroads at which we now find ourselves is useful information, but we can’t get into a semantic argument with liberals over numbers, we MUST oppose the entire concept of nationalizing healthcare at the fundamental, ideological level.  To that end, we need to establish one fact at the outset… healthcare is not a right, and no one is entitled to it.  I challenge anyone in this audience to find “right to healthcare” in the Constitution.  We have allowed the left to co-opt, manipulate, and pervert the language of the debate.  Welfare is now called entitlements, and access to healthcare has transitioned to “right to healthcare”.  This is key to the liberal’s strategy, because it makes it harder to argue against the erosion of YOUR liberty to achieve their strategy.  Words have meaning, and calling them entitlements frames an entirely different debate.  How can you withhold, cut, or expect a citizen to pay for something he/she is “entitled” to?  Well, no more!  We need to take back the language and set our own agenda… put the left on their heels by exposing their desire for more government intrusion and less liberty.  More regulation and less freedom.  More central control/economic planning and less free market innovation.

America (and the freedom, liberty, and opportunity for success that IS America) is the greatest product in the history of mankind!  It should be like selling $20 bills for $10… if we can’t do that, then we deserve every loss of freedom and liberty we are currently experiencing.  But, we can’t just say what we’re against.  We must offer free-market solutions and go toe-to-toe with the left in the arena of ideas. 

The solution to repair the healthcare system is actually strikingly simple… not easy, but simple.  To paraphrase John Galt, “tell the government to get the hell out of our way!”  and put the consumer back in charge.  First, tort reform is mission critical, and it can be as simple as loser pays.  This will radically reduce lawsuits and subsequently reduce malpractice insurance rates.  Allow individuals to deduct the cost of their healthcare coverage just like businesses are already allowed to do.  Allow tax deductible medical saving accounts, allow patients to choose menu-style exactly the coverage they want without various state mandates—you could then envision a “Lending Tree” model for health insurance “when insurance companies compete, you win”.   Stop using ER’s as primary care.  ER specialists know what is/is not an emergency.  Stop forcing them to treat non-emergencies for free.  If you show up at the ER with a headache or common cold, you should be turned away or billed at the exorbitant ER rate and pay for it on the spot.  And finally, STOP providing free medical care to illegal aliens.  These are not draconian measures.  They are the sensible free-market solutions that performed beautifully for decades until the government injected itself in the process, distorting the true market and perverting innovation.  The solutions to the challenges facing America will come from true free-market innovation rather than free-market confiscation.      

 I believe in the greatness of America, and I challenge leftist, statist, liberal (a rose by any other name) to place their vision of a socialist, regulated, spirit-dampened America against the vision WE see for America—a vision of freedom, liberty, free-market innovation, and the opportunity for success that only America provides.  Again, President Reagan articulated better than anyone else could when he described America as the shining city on a hill.  America's best days are ahead, but only if we, America-loving patriots, make the decision to plant our flag now against the accelerating advance of the left debilitating our freedom and liberty – an advance that is gathering speed in Washington even as we gather here today.  We must sound the clarion call for not just what we stand against, but what we stand for.  We are for freedom.  We are for liberty.  We are for free-market innovation.  But, most of all, we are for America!