Congress Should be Required to Test Out All Laws on Themselves

Members of Congress are never bashful about telling the American people how they should live, and then writing laws that impose their agenda on us. The interesting thing is that they often exempt themselves from those laws.

Essentially every employer in the country has to comply with the hundreds of rules and regulations generated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Not Congress. Everyday citizens will be prosecuted and sent to jail, a la Martha Stewart, if they use confidential information to make money through the stock market. Not members of Congress. Obamacare is supposed to be the answer to all our medical problems, but members of Congress and the administration exempted themselves from its provisions.

And now we have another example where Congress is trying to force their radical agenda on private citizens, while exempting themselves from the likely horrible consequences.

An idea that is just starting to percolate through the media is the legislation of healthcare providers to remove the “profit motive”. Rather than being allowed to operate as “for profit” corporations, doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical and medical device companies, and healthcare facilities will be placed under strict price controls, and not allowed to make a profit higher than that determined by Congress.

Never mind that our “for profit” system has produced more medical inventions, discoveries, and the highest level of care in the world, and that “price controlled” healthcare around the world is sliding into involuntary euthanasia for the elderly. Some members of Congress feel they are smart enough to decide how much someone should be paid for saving your life. 

Hey Congress!!! If you think it is such a good idea, why don’t you “try it” first? 

If you want to pursue “price control” healthcare, let’s try it out on members of Congress  for ten years first. We can start by requiring that all members of Congress, past and present, only be treated by healthcare providers that volunteer their time and money and that those volunteers not be allowed to charge other patients more to defray the cost of treating members of Congress and their families. Second, from this point on, no member of Congress of their families would be allowed to use or benefit from any discovery made by a “for profit” company. That means new drugs, medical treatment, or diagnostic devices, or even new surgical techniques developed by someone in a “for profit” business would be denied our Congressional masters.

And no, members of Congress, you can’t use your money and influence to travel to other countries for treatments either. If you think it is such a great idea and you want the rest of us to have to live with it, then you need to put your lives on the line and risk the wellbeing of your families BEFORE you write laws imposing your schemes on the rest of us.

If the idea proves itself to be beneficial to all, and members of Congress are happy with the results of their price-controlled healthcare, then we can look at imposing it on everyone, but I strongly suspect the first time a member of Congress is sick and the only cure comes from a “for profit” company, this whole price control healthcare will die the ignominious death it so richly deserves.