To the editor:
The Republican healthcare proposal is a shining example of how far the Republican party has strayed from the conservative roots and fiscal integrity of the GOP. That party was honest, fiscally conservative and tough but fair in negotiation.
That Republican team would never put forward a proposal with no credible financial analysis or forecast of the impacts on the people involved. The current “plan” is a political ploy that tries to put a check mark in the box labeled “campaign promise.”
The Republican party of today has been hijacked by a libertarian faction that dwells in a fantasy land of 19th century rural economics and society. This limited-government concept of Jeffersonian agrarianism should stay in the trash barrel along with Karl Marx’s communism, Adam Smith’s free-market capitalism, Davis’s states rights, Lenin’s socialism, Mussolini’s fascism and Milosevic’s nationalism.
The democratic experiment that started in 1789 has had over two centuries of worldwide refinement. The most successful nations, including this country prior to 1980, have found a blend of regulated capitalism and well-crafted socialism places them on sound economic and social footing including globalization.
Instead of learning from best practices, which is preached religiously in corporate America, our government at all levels wallows in “not invented here” and “don’t confuse me with the facts.”
If facts, including solid scientific evidence, do not fit the libertarian/conservative philosophy then alternative facts are manufactured to fit, which is what we have throughout the current administration and legislative majority.
We will not get to a resolution of health care in America until we recognize that there is no free market in health care and it requires a tightly regulated national system to be fair to everybody, not just the wealthy. We need thorough practicality and compromise not political philosophy or a dictator to resolve our national issues.
Donald A. Smith
Franklin
