Congress proved it: not even childbirth is off limits to federal mandates. Forty-eight hours will heretofore be the minimum hospital stay for new mothers, Congress said, double the time insurance companies used to cover. Who could disagree with such tender loving care, courtesy of D.C.?
Before the mid 1950s, there was no "retirement" as we use the term today. A 1950 poll showed most workers aspired to work for as long as possible. Quitting was for the disabled. Life did not offer "twilight years," two decades of uninterrupted leisure courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer.
Among the many excuses for government planning is that it makes life safer for one and all. The automobile bears the brunt of this central planning. Like most all interventions in the free market, the effect of mandates to make the car safer is nearly the opposite. Witness the recent air bag fiasco.
In an episode of "Married With Children," Jefferson Darcy tells Al Bundy that he can get fast cash by suing a mall for his stress-related injury. "Malls set aside millions for this type of thing," says Darcy. "If we don't get it, it'll go to Social Security and then no one will get it!"
Everyone laughs, but the reality is no laughing matter.
Two years ago, the Clinton administration fell into near total disrepute among the public. The primary reason was its plot to socialize and nationalize the entire medical industry and conscript doctors and patients into a central plan.
Some Americans are no doubt touched by Bill Clinton's concern for the health of children. His press secretary even declared that it was now the President's personal responsibility to prevent American youth from smoking.
But Clinton's ten-point program to prevent teenage smoking, designed by FDA Czar-for-Life David Kessler, will fail like all previous attempts at government nannyism.
As political scams go, it's hard to top Social Security. It has imposed a prosperity-crushing tax bite on everyone, promoted financial irresponsibility in the middle class, and torn apart the generations. It has lessened the respect any civilized society should have for its elders, even turning some of them into greedy lobbyists. And it has expanded government's reach beyond what any free society should tolerate. The program doesn't even provide security.
It's true that the U.S. health care system is a mess, but this demonstrates not market but government failure. To cure the problem requires not different or more government regulations and bureaucracies, as self-serving politicians want us to believe, but the elimination of all existing government controls.
