In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence declared that all men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” The government was instituted to ensure these rights. This very government now is set to remove these rights – even the right to life. That is what the Democrat House and Senate bills seek to do. As I and others read more and more of the bills, it becomes increasingly clear that the government is set to ration care and limit medical treatment to the elderly and access to doctors. I have been here before.

I grew up in Canada, under their government paid system. According to Canadian media, 5 million Canadians have no access to even a family doctor - out of only 30 million people. That is equivalent to 50 million Americans with no access to doctors. Towns, as shown by John Stossel on US network TV, are holding lotteries to determine who can have a doctor’s appointment.

My mother died there at the age of 78, when it was determined by the hospital that when her kidneys were failing she “was not a good candidate for dialysis.” She lasted a few weeks. My father died in Toronto while recovering from surgery when a storm blew open the window of his hospital room in freezing temperatures. No one checked on him for nearly twelve hours. He caught pneumonia and died a few days later. He was 55.

A Canadian friend had kidney stones and was in excruciating pain. He was given an appointment for a lithotriptor to break up the stones. He would have to wait four months because tight budgets limited access in Toronto. He told me he would have committed suicide before that. He drove to Buffalo, New York and paid to have it done the next day. He needs knee replacements but has been told that he is not eligible until he turns 70, ten years from now. They say it is because the knee device is only good for ten years.

That is the system that Congress wants to install. And rather than reducing health care costs, it will add trillions to a sky-rocketing deficit. I had hoped that the Republicans and the Blue Dog Democrats would demand that Americans control their own right to determine their futures and their very lives. The Blue Dog Democrats say they have compromised with the other Democrats to save 100 billion dollars on the health care plan. They didn’t do it for 100 billion. They did it for thirty pieces of silver.