Psst ... do you think I can make "health care dictator" the new "death panels"? (Adam Hunger/Reuters)
Oh, Michele Bachmann. Why is this woman not en route to the presidency as we speak? Appearing on Glenn Beck's online TV show Tuesday night, Bachmann started a chain of thought about the Obama administration's mandate that employer-provided health care plans make birth control available with the premise that, in her words, "what the government can give, the government can take away," and then "going with that logic" arrived at the following thought:
[I]t isn’t far-fetched to think that the President of the United States could say, we need to save health care expenses — the federal government will only pay for one baby to be born in the hospital per family, or two babies to be born per family. That could happen. We think it couldn’t?
And as we all know, if the federal government doesn't pay for your babies to be born, you can't have any babies. Asked for clarification by one of the program's hosts, Bachmann said:
"What I’m saying is that now that we know the President of the United States unilaterally can tell insurance companies, you must offer the morning-after abortion pill, you must offer sterilizations, you must offer contraceptives free to the recipients of those products, because we tell you to — which means they’re effectively setting the price, as well — that says that whoever the health care dictator, could conceivably make that order, as well."
So to Bachmann, if the government makes birth control
available, we are on the road to a "health care dictator" telling us how we will use that birth control. It's a perfect example of the
very narrow conservative definition of freedom.
And I don't know about you, but when it comes to birth control, the wannabe health care dictator I worry about is the pope.