The Price of Freedom

Thomas Jefferson opined that "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." This was uttered in a different place and time, before the advent of National Socialism, Communism, and the nanny state.

Today, I suggest that the price of freedom is self-reliance, for it is only with a national belief of self-reliance that a nation may keep its freedom from a dictatorial government.

The modern American Democrat has long known that their power is based upon expanding the class of people who are dependent on the government for their way of life. The larger the dependency class, the greater the power the Democrats will possess.

Controlling the nation's health care is the ultimate power grab. Not just because controlling health care means providing Democrat-appointed bureaucrats the power of life and death over everyone, but also because it creates a dependent class of all citizens who cannot afford to leave the country for appropriate medical treatment.

Furthermore, it will create a direct dependency class of those citizens who are directly employed by a nationalized health service. Currently, the third largest single employer in the world is the National Health Service in England, behind only the PRC Army and Indian Rail (the employment numbers for the entire UK would be higher, as you add the numbers servicing Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland). The English National Health Service has more than 1.2 Million employees, less than half of which are actual care-givers, and only 109,000 of which are English doctors.

Applying this ratio of NHS employees to the English working age population, it would be extrapolated that in the United States, a government run health care system would employ Eight Million Americans, over Four Million of which would be administrative employees. The Democrats know that there would be Eight Million citizens whose livelihood would be dependent upon the preservation of that nationalized health system, and Eight Million votes to preserve such a system once it was put into place.

I had the pleasure of speaking with several English doctors on holiday a couple of years ago. What we should understand is that NHS doctors are not college and medical school trained doctors at all, but identified during high school as having a competence for medical learning, and diverted to medical training in what Americans would call a trade school. At best, the standard NHS doctor would be a physician assistant in the United States. This mirrors my experience in the other government-provided health care service I have experienced first hand, the United States Army.