When the diatribe promoting medicine as a "right" is stripped away, all that remains is an unfathomable bureaucratic web, which at the end of the day requires resources from one citizen in order to pay the medical bills of another.

As the "healthcare" debate reaches its contrived crescendo, Barack Obama is proving to be the perfect con man. In every instance, he tells adoring crowds and media sycophants what they want to hear, often contradicting last week's statements with this week's damage control sound bite. And considering that his poll numbers have remained above single digits, it must be conceded that to some extent the ploy is working.

Nevertheless, over time Obama's vision for America has materialized. It is an ugly picture. Fantastic promises of lavish government provisions for every citizen (and non-citizen) eventually reveal themselves to be a well-crafted veneer overlaying bureaucratic nightmares from which no law-abiding citizen can hope to escape. In stark contrast, no real "benefit" is to be reaped from this encroaching monster. Instead, the people are merely assured on a regular basis that their condition is of great concern to the ruling class. But the specifics of each monstrous new program, whenever mentioned, tell another story.

Of course the most prominent example of late is the matter of nationalized "health care," which Obama assures us is not socialism. Despite his assurances, when the diatribe promoting medicine as a "right" is stripped away, all that remains is an unfathomable bureaucratic web, which at the end of the day requires resources from one citizen in order to pay the medical bills of another. In the process, the power and influence of government grows enormously. But it is not socialism.

The picture gets far worse still. Addressing the inevitability of an overloaded and unaccountable system during one of those moments in which his teleprompter did not present the state-approved talking point, Obama let slip the grim truth that the rationing of care, and the likelihood of it deliberately being withheld from certain individuals, would be determined by such dispassionate factors as the age of the intended recipient.

Things are close to coming full circle for those seniors who empowered the Democrats and the nanny state by obsessing over Social Security at the expense of every other issue. Just as "viability" (or the ostensible lack thereof) according to abortion proponents is sufficient reason to make a determination of life or death for an innocent unborn child, so will "quality of life" be deemed an equally acceptable reason to render or deny proper care to any elderly person.

Americans have access to the best health care system in the world. The hospitals in the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania alone house more MRI machines than all of Canada's hospitals combined. No one in this country is ever forced to endure unwarranted waiting periods for routine medical procedures, as is invariably the case in any country where the government has seized control of the medical industry. This is the brave new world of Obamacare.

Perhaps it may seem that all of the alarmism is overwrought and premature. Does Barack Obama possibly warrant such mistrust on this crucial issue? Unfortunately, his consistent and appalling track record of fraud and deceit answers that question decisively.

Last year's abandonment of his campaign promise to use public funds, thereby limiting expenditures, was a classic example of Obama's devotion to the political expediency of any given moment. Early on, when it made for good press to advocate such limits, Obama was head cheerleader. But the moment it became apparent that he could amass far greater sums of money by backpedaling, the prior commitment was unceremoniously discarded. Any promise from this man is only good for as long as it serves his own purpose.

It is more of the same on the various other fronts of the assault on free America. Thus, the "stimulus" package, in which America's coffers were pillaged in what Vice President Joe Biden deemed the necessity to "go spend money to keep from going bankrupt," has since been revealed to be an orgy of federal pork bestowed to every liberal special interest group known to exist. As for the supposed "shot in the arm" such irresponsibility would ostensibly give the American market, that minor detail will simply have to wait for another spending spree.

Likewise, any assumption that the federal "Energy Bill" might actually make gasoline cheaper and more widely available was proven insanely naive. The enormous conglomeration of environmentalist mandates, offering extremely expensive placebos to allay every contorted theory of environmental doom, did nothing at all to ensure an available and steady supply of energy to the consumer. For those gullible peasants who expected such help, Obama offered the notion that by properly inflating their tires they could save gas. Meanwhile, the ability to own and drive a car of one's choice has been systematically undermined.

The promises of ethics and "transparency" in this administration are proving to be nothing more than a cruel joke. Obama's disturbing tendency to obfuscate and dodge difficult questions early on now gives way to the blatant suppression of inconvenient and contradictory information. Thus, an Inspector General who dared to simply do his job and look into financial anomalies among Obama minions in San Francisco was summarily fired and maliciously slandered as "justification" for his dismissal.

The findings of Alan Carlin, an analyst with the Environmental Protection Agency, were suppressed once he concluded that the scientific evidence does not support the leftist "global warming" conspiracy.

In a similar action, on Monday, July 20, Obama ordered the White House Budget Update to be suppressed until August, at which time its grim prognosis of America's economic condition might come too late to derail the implementation of socialized "health care."

Metastasizing governmental bureaucracies, phony "science" established by environmental extremists, and the total corruption of the justice system may not be the "change" real America wanted. But unless the citizenry wakes up to the dangers it represents, and demands a return to sanity back in Washington, it may be the reality of change that is brutally forced on the people of this nation, and from which it may never recover.