Americans have long been an independent breed.

They have largely been responsible for their own needs during this nation’s 200-plus-year existence.

When the first European settlers came to the shores of America in the 1600s, they came seeking freedom from dictatorial government policies in the lands they had left.

They faced hardships en route to developing a new system of government in which people made decisions for themselves.

The system of government they developed served to allow a citizenry of resilient, independent people who wanted to – and did – meet their own needs.

A world-wide depression in the early 20th century gave then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt the opportunity to put in place new policies that forced more government controls on individuals.

Supporters believe he was meeting the needs of people imperiled by the depression. Others believe restrictive government banking regulations caused the depression.

UCLA Profs Say New Deal Prolonged Depression

Two UCLA professors, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law more than 80 years ago thwarted economic recovery for some seven years.

“Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump,” said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA’s Department of Economics. “We found that a relapse isn’t likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies.”

In an article in the August issue of the Journal of Political Economy, Ohanian and Cole blame specific anti-competition and pro-labor measures that Roosevelt promoted and signed into law June 16, 1933.

“President Roosevelt believed that excessive competition was responsible for the Depression by reducing prices and wages, and by extension reducing employment and demand for goods and services,” said Cole, also a UCLA professor of economics. “So he came up with a recovery package that would be unimaginable today, allowing businesses in every industry to collude without the threat of antitrust prosecution and workers to demand salaries about 25 percent above where they ought to have been, given market forces. The economy was poised for a beautiful recovery, but that recovery was stalled by these misguided policies.”

Johnson’s, ‘Great Society’ to End Poverty, Injustice

Later came Democratic President Lyndon Baines Johnson, the 36th U.S. president who succeeded to the office of president in November 1963 following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Johnson launched an ambitious slate of changes to federal government policies, which he branded “The Great Society,” vowing they would lead to an end to poverty and racial injustice.

Twenty-one years later, in an address delivered in 1983, President Ronald Reagan denounced the Great Society as a bundle of expensive and failed initiatives that contributed to, rather than alleviated, suffering. Johnson’s legacy reinforced what Reagan called the “central political error of our time” – the flawed notion that “government and bureaucracy” were the “primary vehicle for social change.”

The left minority in the U.S. jumped on the opportunity to expand its influence promising more freebies to those who would take them.

Johnson’s plan was not as expansive as the current day Progressive elite that control the U.S. House of Representatives, who openly refer to themselves as socialist-Democrats.

House Dems Unveil Total Government Control Health Plan

Last week, House Democrats unveiled a plan to bring total government control over health care – the Medicare for All Act of 2019, a comprehensive bill to abolish virtually all private health plans,  including employer-sponsored coverage, and impose total federal government control over Americans’ health care.

Despite its sweeping and detailed government control, as well as the imposition of huge but unknown costs, the 120-page bill has nonetheless initially attracted 106 Democrat co-sponsors, almost half of all Democrats in the House, writes Robert E. Moffit, Ph.D., senior fellow in Domestic policy studies at The Heritage Foundation.

The bill they revealed is a sure cinch to bankrupt America.

Analysts from the Mercatus Center and the Urban Institute roughly agree that the true 10-year cost of Independent-Socialist Vermont Sen Bernie Sanders’ similar plan would be approximately $32 trillion.

Ken Thorpe of Emory University, formerly an adviser to President Bill Clinton, estimates that the federal taxation needed to finance the Sanders’ plan would amount to an additional 20 percent tax on workers’ income, and more than 7 out of 10 working families would end up paying more for health care than they do today.

Follitt discusses aspects of the bill as follows:

“Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., the bill’s primary sponsor, is at least open about the bill’s intent:  ‘The Medicare for All bill really makes it clear what we mean by ‘Medicare for All.’  We mean a system where there are no private insurance companies that provide these core comprehensive benefits.”

Under Section 201, Congress would decide the content of the health benefits package, what is and is not to be available in the new government health plan. The bill forbids cost sharing, a statutory prohibition guaranteed to induce demand and hike Americans’ overall health costs.  

Americans would not be able simply to spend their own money for medical care from a doctor of their choice. Personal contracts between doctors and patients outside of the government plan would be tightly restricted. Under Section 301, “ … no charge will be made to any individual for any covered items or services than for payment authorized by this Act.”  

Under Section 303, a provider “ … may not bill or enter into any private contract with any individual eligible for benefits under the Act for any item or service that is a benefit under this Act.”  

Even private contracts for “non-covered” medical services require the doctor to report them to the health and human services secretary. Section 303 also stipulates that a private contract between a doctor and a patient for “covered” services would be permissible if and only if the doctor signs and files the affidavit with the secretary of HHS and refrains from submitting any claim for any person “enrolled under this Act” for two full years.

Altogether, these restrictions, layered atop the prohibition on private insurance coverage, would virtually eliminate private agreements between doctors and patients.

In practice, Americans could spend their own money on their own terms with just the very few doctors who could afford to see cash-paying patients entirely outside the system.  

In most respects, the new House bill is broadly similar to Sen. Bernie Sanders’  bill. Beyond creating a government monopoly of health insurance, it centralizes key health care decisions in the office of the secretary of HHS; establishes a national health budget; and it creates a temporary Medicare-style “public option” (along with subsidies for enrollees) in the moribund Obamacare exchanges.  

Like Sanders’ bill, the House bill would also eliminate Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, the Obamacare exchange plans, and Tricare, the health program for military dependents. All of these beneficiaries would be absorbed into the new government plan; it would not be a matter of personal choice.  

In striking contrast to the earlier version of the House “Medicare for All” bill, the new House bill contains no tax or funding provisions. This is a conspicuous omission. This is especially so because the House sponsors (under Section 204) also incorporate long-term care coverage, including nursing home and community-based care, into the basic benefit package. This coverage would likely be hugely expensive.

Independent analysts from the Mercatus Center and the Urban Institute roughly agree that the true 10-year cost of Sanders’ similar plan would be approximately $32 trillion.

The federal spending and taxation needed to fund the new House bill would certainly be larger. Beyond the potential impact of the bill on the nation’s deficits and debt, independent analysts and economists will also focus laser-like on the size and impact of the new federal taxes on individuals and families at various income levels.

Simply taxing “the rich” will not cut it.    

The House co-sponsors of the Medicare for All Act intend a rapid transformation of American health care.

Under Section 106 of the bill, they authorize the completion of this massive disruption of today’s public and private health insurance arrangements within just two years.