Healthcare Reform Comment

Here is my brief response to Frank Rich's latest column.

I would like national healthcare. It would be great not to worry about whether we can afford medical care for our children or have to consider the loss of benefits before switching employment. The problem is that enacting such a plan continues to move us away from the model of a restricted role for federal government where only those powers enumerated in the constitution are available to it and the rest are reserved to the people as individuals or to the many states.

You may choose to demonize our fellow citizens and lump the majority of conservatives in with the gun toting crazies but that dismissive attitude fails to illuminate their legitimate reluctance to grant ever more authority to politicians in DC.

How is it that states, not the federal government, are able to provide education to all their students yet you think it appropriate that they not do the same for health care? Maybe you don't see a difference between the roles of state and national governments except that the national government can be used as a means to achieve your goals in one swoop.

The rights we maintain, the gift of Liberty, is the result of a conscious choice on the part of our society and is only maintained by restraining the power of the government. As much as you don't want to give Republicans authority to say who can and cannot marry, so too we must not be seduced into using the awesome power of the federal government to coerce behavior that is not within it's constrained and enumerated authority.

What Massachusetts has begun let others follow. Let our states compete for workers by enacting health reform that improves their competitiveness. Let's keep the Federal Government out of anything for which it is not absolutely necessary. Failing that, let's have a real national debate and amend the Constitution if needed to facilitate the form of government we find preferable.