Do you like brainteasers? I’ll give you a series of political facts and then you guess the final step in the series. Let’s play.

Brain Teaser #1: It is 1937 and President Roosevelt introduces Social Security where money from many workers is redistributed to a few retirees. Just like every ponzi scheme, money is plentiful early in the game, so President Roosevelt dies a hero in 1945. The contribution rate begins at 2 percent, doubles to 4 percent in 1956, and then becomes 6 percent by 1961. Three years later, the growing Social Security Trust Fund created by the 76 million working baby-boomers, entice politicians to create new benefit categories like Medicare and Medicaid. By the ‘70s Social Security expenses surpasses revenues, talk of insolvency surfaces, and contribution rates begin the climb to 12.4 percent. January 1st, 2011 marks the beginning of the “Era of the Golden Boomers” when the majority of the retiring baby-boomers begin draining the system. And so the last piece of the puzzle is…?

(Answer:) Social Security will be maintained by a combination of four things: Raise taxes, decrease benefits, raise the retirement eligibility age and ask recipients to die younger. Coincidentally, the answer to Brain Teaser #1 leads me directly into Brain Teaser #2. (Actually it isn’t a coincidence; I did this on purpose.)

Brain Teaser #2: In 1946 the commercial production of penicillin dropped its price from $20 to 55 cents per dose and launched the era of modern day medicine. For the next two decades, free-market rules set prices for medical care and routine procedures were within reach of most consumers. In 1964 the introduction of Medicaid and Medicare disrupted free-market influences and the uncovered cost for Medicaid and Medicare patients was shifted to others. Health care costs skyrocketed and even routine procedures became too expensive for most consumers. To solve this problem created by government intervention, politicians offered more government intervention. On March 23rd, 2010, ObamaCare became the largest government bureaucracy and it was to be principally administered by the compassionate doctors of the Internal Revenue Service.

Sold under the guise the entire program will be paid for by making Medicare and Medicaid more efficient, rumors of rationing swept the nation. The Obama administration assured us this was not the case, and then on July 7, 2010, they appointed Donald Berwick as Administrator of Medicare and Medicaid. Mr. Berwick is a self-proclaimed expert on rationing and openly states the purpose of ObamaCare is to redistribute wealth. Facing the statistical impossibility of providing free health care for the “Era of the Golden Boomers”, something must change. And so the last piece of the puzzle is…?

(Answer:) Ironically the answers to both teasers are nearly the same: Raise taxes, ration services, raise the eligibility age and ask recipients to die younger!

This brings me to my point: Welcome to the world of rationed care and physician-assisted suicide. Under ObamaCare, life aiding procedures like joint replacement and heart bypass will cease for patients over the age of 55. (Especially for those whose Body Mass Index lies outside the government’s directive of normal.) Cheap opiates and medical marijuana will be the panacea for every disorder until you accept the final solution.

Representative Dick Barrett, (D-Missoula), announced July 8th; he is introducing a physician-assisted suicide bill in the 2011 Montana Legislative Session. The same political ideology which creates dependency through Social Security and ObamaCare now brings us the final solution. Certainly, even the most ardent supporters of the progressive movement can’t remain blind to this dangerous precedent where the sickest, weakest and most desperate of Americans are offered physician-assisted suicide as a viable (non-viable?) solution. ObamaCare must be nullified and Rep. Barrett’s physician-assisted suicide bill must be defeated by the Montana Legislature. If voters return me with a conservative majority to office, we will do both.