Health Care Fascism in MA : A Harbinger of Our Future

The WSJ recently wrote an excellent piece providing an update on how the health care situation has been playing out in Massachusett's several years after the institution of RomneyCare. As we are all aware, the state-wide initative there provided the blueprint which ObamaCare essentially copied and applied on a national scale.

Consequently, it should not come as a  suprise to anyone when the logical consequences of the implementation of ObamaCare turn out to be no different.

http://tinyurl.com/9tk3fen

RomneyCare 2.0 

With costs rising fast, Massachusetts moves to dictate medical care.

From the article:

"....The same plan enacted in Massachusetts has resulted in "surging [health care] costs, price controls, physician shortages" and a lot more, including their new plan to hold their doctors hostage by means of their state medical licenses:

"...Under the plan, all Massachusetts doctors, hospitals and other providers must register with a new state bureaucracy as a condition of licensure—that is, permission to practice. ...

An 11-member board known as the Health Policy Commission will use the data to set and enforce rules to ensure that total Massachusetts health spending, public and private, grows no more than projected gross state product through 2017, and 0.5 percentage points lower thereafter. ...

No registered provider is allowed to make "any material change to its operations or governance structure," the bill says, without the commission's approval. The commission can also rewrite the terms of provider contracts with insurers and payment levels and methods if they are "deemed to be excessive....

In other words, the commission is empowered to control the practice and organization of medicine."

Take a good hard look, folks: This is what fascism looks like:

The dictionary definition of fascism is: “a governmental system with strong centralized power, permitting no opposition or criticism, controlling all affairs of the nation (industrial, commercial, etc.), emphasizing an aggressive nationalism . . .” [The American College Dictionary,
New York: Random House, 1957.]

Under fascism, citizens retain the responsibilities of owning property, without freedom to act and without any of the advantages of ownership. Under socialism, government officials acquire all the advantages of ownership, without any of the responsibilities, since they do not hold title to the property, but merely the right to use it—at least until the next purge. In either case, the government officials hold the economic, political and legal power of life or death over the citizens."

 http://tinyurl.com/pqglow

 What is particularly interesting here is that the text, the scope and intent of the government take-over plan mimics almost word for word, the text of Directive 10-289 in Ayn Rand's 1957 epic novel, Atlas Shrugged- with a few minor modifications as follows:

http://tinyurl.com/9tk3fen

"DIRECTIVE 10-289

“In the name of the general welfare to protect the people’s [health care] security, to achieve full equality and total [health care] stability, it is decreed for the duration of the national [health care] emergency that-

All [doctors and health care providers] of any kind whatsoever shall henceforth be attached to their jobs and shall not leave nor be dismissed nor change employment, under penalty of a term in jail. The penalty shall be determined by the [ Health Policy Commission ]  , such board to be appointed by the Bureau Of Economic Planning and National Resources.....

Every establishment, concern, corporation or person engaged in production of any [health care good or service] whatsoever shall henceforth produce the same amount of goods per year as is, they or he produced during the Basic Year, no more or no less. The year is to known as the Basic or Yardstick Year is to be the year ending on the date of this directive. Over or under production shall be fined, such fines to be determined by the Unification board.....

All [health care] wages, prices, salaries, dividends, profits, interest rates and forms of income of any nature whatsoever, shall be frozen at their present figures, as of the date of this directive. (But taxes will be allowed to increase as needed for the public good)....

 All cases arising from and rules not specifically provided for in this directive, shall be settled and determined by the [Health Policy Commission], whose decisions shall be final...."

See the full text of Directive 10-289 here:

http://tinyurl.com/kotabr