INSATIABLE

(Published in the Independent Coast Observer)


The federal bureaucracy is insatiable for power and the ultimate results of its actions in dealing with complex matters (such as health care) will be less freedom, greater inefficiency, and an inherent inability to adjust requirements to reality. A case in point is last week’s announcement by HHS that it must delay the implementation of its new reimbursement codes for Medicare. These new reimbursement codes will increase the total number from 18,000 to more than140,000!

Why such an increase? Well, for example, the regulations will apply 36 different codes for treating a snake bite, depending on the type of snake, its geographical region, and whether the incident was accidental, intentional, assault, or undetermined. The new codes also thoroughly differentiate between nine different types of hang-gliding injuries, four different types of alligator attacks, and the important difference between injuries sustained by walking into a wall and those resulting from walking into a lamppost, and so on. (Michael Tanner, National Review Online, 2/29/12)

Americans are becoming increasingly aware of the extent to which the federal government’s power to control our lives is expanding. Everyday, regulation writers are busy churning out requirements that will diminish our freedom and our pocketbooks. Such requirements are often thinly supported by Congressional law, if at all, and too many laws go unread by lawmakers. That was absolutely the case with ObamaCare. But the bureaucrats read them and then interpret them, and their political bosses enforce them, and we (citizens, doctors, businessmen, etc.) must abide by them or face punishment.

Conservatives understand that we need Constitutionally sound laws to enable a free, dynamic society. But we don’t abide the dictatorial tactics of leaders who use a compliant federal bureaucracy to bend whole segments of our lives to their ideologies.

Jim Littlejohn

Concerned Coastal Voters

Gualala, CA