Dingell: It will take a while for ObamaCare to “control the people”

At Hot Air:

Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) defended the ObamaCare bill on WJR’s Paul W. Smith show yesterday when the host wondered why Democrats wait until 2014 to stop people from dying through lack of universal health care coverage. Dingell tells Smith that it takes a lot of hard work and preparation to create a system that will “control the people.” Freudian slip? I’ve clipped the complete question and answer, so you can decide for yourself. The American Thinker transcribed the answer (via CentristNet):

 Let me remind you this has been going on for years. We are bringing it to a halt. The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re going to pass legislation that will cover 300 American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.

It may be the mother of all Freudian slips (which is itself a Freudian joke, if you didn’t catch it). “Control the people” could have one of two contexts here, of course; it could mean patient management, or it could be taken literally. It would take quite a while to “control” 300 million people in either sense of the phrase. Of course, in either sense, it’s one of the good reasons why the government shouldn’t be in the health-care business. The private sector is better designed to manage patients.

But of course, the private sector isn’t designed to “control the people” in the literal sense. You have to have government to do that, and people in charge who believe they should be in charge of “control[ling] the people” instead of supporting and defending the Constitution.