They give donors, political allies at Big Pharma a wet kiss
By Dr. Milton R. Wolf
The Washington Times
Monday, March 12, 2012
Pop quiz: What is the most expensive lunch you can buy? Answer: The one someone convinces you is free. Ask your average fifth-grader if there’s such thing as a free lunch. Now ask a Democrat. Care to wager who’s smarter? Another quiz: How can Democrats avoid discussions of Obamacare’s growing price tag, the failed stimulus, green job boondoggles, unemployment, bank bailouts, auto takeovers, food stamps, credit downgrades and soaring gas prices? Answer: Claim that Republicans want to steal your girly parts.
When the going gets tough, the left gets predictable. Democrats’ false promises of big-government utopia have collapsed once again and so they retreat to their well-worn playbook, which really only has three plays: class warfare, an overcharged race card and an equally overcharged gender card. Throw in some good old-fashioned corporate boondoggles and voila! Democrats have their re-election plan.
Under the sweeping powers of Obamacare, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is empowered to reach into our churches and direct how they will practice their religion. Yawn. Just another day under President Obama’s authoritarian regime. But why harass churches? Because, as New York Democrat Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney claims, there’s a “Republican crusade to limit access to birth control. …” There is?
According to the Guttmacher Institute, a spinoff of Planned Parenthood, “Virtually all women (more than 99 percent) aged 15-44 who have ever had sexual intercourse have used at least one contraceptive method.” This is a crisis of limited access?
Democrats showcased Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke and her plea for a $3,000 birth control free lunch. Meanwhile, Wal-Mart and Target pharmacies offer $9-a-month birth control - $108 a year. Why the wild difference? Because Democrats can’t enrich their cronies on a mere hundred bucks a year.
The new HHS provisions make no distinction between high-end, expensive birth control and generic versions. This is the big wet kiss to Big Pharma. They get rich much quicker collecting $3,000 for each coed instead of a measly $108. So Ms. Fluke gets a free lunch? Well, not quite. Somebody’s got to pay the increased taxes, higher insurance premiums and - mark my words - increased contraception costs. So the government simply transfers those bills to someone else, like the janitors at Georgetown Law, for example, who humbly clean up after spoiled kids. I’ll bet those janitors buy their own birth control at Wal-Mart without whining. But Ms. Fluke is entitled and I’m sure she’s worth it.
This corporate boondoggle that turns Big Pharma into a welfare recipient on the backs of the working class is not so different than the light bulb ban. General Electric gets rich much quicker if Ms. Fluke’s janitors are forced to buy $5 compact-fluorescent light bulbs instead of the 50-cent incandescent version. But it’s for the environment, right? That GE and Big Pharma contribute generously to Mr. Obama is just a mere coincidence.
Do you see the pattern here? Democrats solve the global warming “crisis” (even though the globe forgot to warm) and the “limit” on birth control access (even with essentially 100 percent access already achieved) always by making their friends richer, you poorer and themselves more powerful.
There’s another pattern here. Politicians are like drug dealers. Once you’re addicted to freebies, you suddenly realize the free lunch is not so free. Like the drug dealers, the politicians want your money, to be sure, but what they really covet is your submission. They love telling you what to do and they always claim it’s for your own good.
Think about it. The U.S. Constitution grants no authority to the federal government - and, in fact, the 10th Amendment prohibits it - to declare how fast you can drive your car or when you can buy your first beer or how many vegetable servings you must pack in your kid’s school lunch. And yet they still do all these things. How? By dangling highway funds or education grants like a carrot. Take that bait and you’ll soon learn in the fine print that you surrendered control of everything from how much water your toilet can flush to what websites your computer can access. And now the contraception free lunch is the politicians’ key to your bedroom door. Do you trust them with it?
Of course, Democrats assume there will always be an endless supply of birth control pills to dole out. But should they? The current prescription drug shortage epidemic is essentially limited to the medications that are most highly regulated by the government: injectable chemotherapies and antibiotics.
“If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert,” economist Milton Friedman famously said, “in five years there’d be a shortage of sand.” Well I say, if you put the federal government in charge of birth control, there will be another shortage soon. We’ll call it the Obama Baby Boom.
Dr. Milton R. Wolf, a Washington Times columnist, is a radiologist and President Obama’s cousin. He blogs at miltonwolf.com.
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