Well, the president’s right on that account. We must act — to preserve what freedoms we have remaining, and fight for those we have lost.

Of course, I have taken Obama’s statement entirely out of context. He’s saying that “inaction is not an option” in pushing America toward universal health coverage, and he wants Congress to act fast. To act fast, because if we take even a few minutes to think about how this massive entitlement is to be paid for, whether it would work the way the president claims it will, much less how individual rights get trampled in the process, it will become clear that serving his whim is not only untenable but immoral.

Obama insists that we can reduce the costs of Medicare to help pay for this plan. Wait…by creating a whole NEW class of entitled Americans who will be demanding healthcare resources? Any college student who has taken even a semester of economics can tell you that when supply remains static, if demand rises, so will prices. Except that supply of healthcare won’t remain static. It is going to drop once we start telling doctors — men and women who spend years paying huge sums of money to attend medical school, then waiting several more years making small salaries as residents before they can start to tap into their earning potential — that they are to be paid less for what they do. Shortages, here we come.

Congress wants to pay for this plan by taxing the top 1% of income-earners — the group that already bears the highest burden of our welfare state — another 1% to 5%. So the world will bear ever harder down on Atlas’s shoulders — don’t be too surprised if more and more high-income Americans choose to shrug. When you punish people for being productive, they will slowly stop being productive.

Congress also wants to sock businesses who don’t insure their employees with an extra tax of 8% on salaries, but not companies with a payroll of $250,000 or less. What does that mean for a mom-and-pop shop deciding whether or not to hire its fourth or fifth employee? What does that mean for a business already struggling to pay corporate income taxes and follow government regulations, whose profit margins are too narrow to absorb this new cost? Don’t expect employment rates to rise, if we cripple the people who provide employment.

By urging legislators to act fast, Obama is behaving like nothing more than a con artist — trying to get his whims made law before anyone has performed the necessary task of thinking about what the results of such action will be. He should be selling Ginsu knives — not in charge of this country’s future.

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