Garden State Patriot

Late last night, Sarah Palin posted a piece on Facebook entitled “Good Intentions Aren’t Enough with Health Care Reform.” Her post begins as follows:

Now that the Senate Finance Committee has approved its health care bill, it’s a good time to step back and take a look at the long term consequences should its provisions be enacted into law.

The bill prohibits insurance companies from refusing coverage to people with pre-existing conditions and from charging sick people higher premiums. [1] It attempts to offset the costs this will impose on insurance companies by requiring everyone to purchase coverage, which in theory would expand the pool of paying policy holders.

However, the maximum fine for those who refuse to purchase health insurance is $750. [2] Even factoring in government subsidies, the cost of purchasing a plan is much more than $750. The result: many people, especially the young and healthy, will simply not buy coverage, choosing to pay the fine instead. They’ll wait until they’re sick to buy health insurance, confident in the knowledge that insurance companies can’t deny them coverage. Such a scenario is a perfect storm for increasing the cost of health care and creating an unsustainable mandate program.

Those driving this plan no doubt have good intentions, but good intentions aren’t enough. There were good intentions behind the drive to increase home ownership for lower-income Americans, but forcing financial institutions to give loans to people who couldn’t afford them had terrible unintended consequences. We all felt those consequences during the financial collapse last year. Unintended consequences always result from top-down big government plans like the current health care proposals, and we can’t afford to ignore that fact again.

Sarah Palin, of course, clearly has Presidential aspirations and, in that light, saying the proponents of government-run healthcare have ‘good intentions’ is certainly a diplomatic approach. In fact, I think most Republicans and conservatives have been of the opinion that our leftist friends generally have good intentions but are simply naive or misguided. For most of my adult life I have shared that opinion as well.

However, I can no longer say that I subscribe to such a view. There simply are no good intentions behind socialism. There is only misery, poverty and tyranny. That the leaders of today’s Democratic Party would pursue such an agenda – an agenda that subverts our very constitution I might add – when they are presumably knowledgeable about the history of socialism, let alone the disastrous consequences of socialized medicine in other nations, is the epitome of bad intentions. One who would pursue such an agenda does not have good intentions, but instead has a selfish quest for power and control over our lives.

As such, the days of Republicans and conservatives being kind enough to attribute ‘good intentions’ to the statists and socialists on the left need to cease. We need to begin calling a spade a spade. And we need to begin forthrightly telling our fellow citizens that intentions are only good when they begin and end with unapologetically promoting individual liberty and unbridled capitalism.

It would be a good start if Sarah Palin, the darling of many conservatives and potential 2012 Presidential nominee, would carry this torch and bring this message to the American people instead of - dare I say - trying to ‘put lipstick on a pig.’

Cross-posted at Conservatives with Attitude!