The Future Cultural Effects of ObamaCare

Dr. Milton Wolf, Obama's second cousin, offers an editorial in which he pleads "First, Do No Harm" with respect to ObamaCare. His essay revolves around issues of cost and makes some good points. He says,

Already, 42 percent of doctors have chosen that route [refusing to accept Medicare patients because it's too costly], and it will get worse. Your mother’s shiny government-issued Medicare health card is meaningless without doctors who will accept it.

True, but there is a more fundamental issue at work. What he doesn't say is that the next step toward totalitarianism is clear.

First, Congress will violate your constitutional rights by requiring you to purchase insurance. Then, they will close the loophole by coercing doctors to treat any and all patients, on pain of losing their license, being fined, or going to jail.

Once the principle is established that someone's need justifies coercing someone else to meet it, there is no limit to the practical implementation. The precedent has already been established, after all. In every state, emergency rooms are required to treat anyone who walks in and many get their health care needs met there for free.

Only the inertia of past culture - a tradition of independence and legal protections of liberty - will slow it down. But that can't last forever. Under legislation of the sort proposed - and the continuing intellectual onslaught of Progressivism that is rapidly eroding support for and even the memory of those traditions - America will become Sweden, and soon thereafter Venezuela, and eventually far worse.

So long as that pernicious moral principle stands, the result is inevitable.

Fortunately, when it comes to moral principles, nothing is inevitable. It requires only careful thought, clear arguments, and the courage to stand against those who accept that idea to make it historical detritus, like so many other bad ones long abandoned.

[Hat tip HotAir.]