The sheer volume of the nutty screaming from the Right can obscure the rank hypocrisy of the GOP’s attacks on health care reform. So let’s clear up a few things.
Health care reform is about getting our neighbors better health care, reducing unnecessary suffering and early death. “Socialism!” cry the Republicans. “Tyranny!” But how are the reforms being discussed any different in kind from existing public health services, like ambulances?
Here’s a picture. A Republican gets a broken collar bone in a car wreck. The EMS folk show up. “Get away,” shouts the Republican. “You’re a communist!” Right.
Just as baffling: the same right wing people who support government domestic spying, an imperial presidency, an end to habeas corpus, government controls on our private lives, public school teaching of unique religious doctrine, etc. oppose a government role in making us healthier. Spy on us, send our kids to war, imprison us without cause, tell us who we can love, control women’s bodies — it’s okay for government to do those things. But improve our health? That’s dangerous.
The problem the right has with health care reform is not that it represents intrusive government (it doesn’t). It’s that it doesn’t represent the kind of intrusive, authoritarian government they like.
Or how about this. An obscure panel that develops medical guidelines questions whether regular mammograms should be delayed until age 50. They are suggestions, not regulations. All hell breaks loose. “See,” cry the Republicans. “Government rationing of health care!” Lost in the shouting is the undeniable fact that private health insurance companies are already rationing health care. But here’s the key point: All the shouting– from justifiably concerned and confused women to right wing partisan exploiters — gets the agency to back off. See, government can be made accountable in ways private insurance companies never have been and never will be.
The health care debate has made one fact obvious: there are no credible, principled arguments against using our democratically elected government to help improve our health. Many of those screaming “socialism” today are already accepting the benefits of Medicare of Social Security. Right wingers, paid by insurance companies to do it, attacked those programs too, warning that they would destroy America.
For those of you who are on your way to Thanksgiving dinners next week with family members who, let’s say, do not always see eye to eye with you politically, here is a little of the private insurance back story. It might be helpful.
The insurance industry did not really want to get into the health business, and didn’t until the 1930s and 1940s. Why? Because they couldn’t figure out how to make money. Life insurance made money, because the investment of premium dollars earned them much more than benefits paid. Property insurance was profitable because premiums are paid by millions of people whose houses never burn down. But everyone needs a doctor. What to do?
Insurance big wigs figured it out. Deny coverage to those at risk of poor health. Deny reimbursement or benefits to policy holders. In other words, all of the health insurance industry profits come from the denial of care. It’s an ugly fact, but true nonetheless.
And this turned the American health care system into a brutal, nationwide version of Sophie’s Choice. Collectively, the health of one depends upon the sacrifice of another. Is that really how we want to treat one another?
The New York Time’s Nicholas D. Kristof made an excellent point in his column this week. I’ll close with his thought:
These days, the critics of Medicare have come around because it manifestly works. Life expectancy for people who have reached the age of 65 has risen significantly. America is no longer shamed by elderly Americans suffering for lack of medical care.
Yet although America’s elderly are now cared for, our children are not. A Johns Hopkins study found that hospitalized children who are uninsured are 60 percent more likely to die than those with insurance, presumably because they are less likely to get preventive care and to be taken to the doctor when sick. The study suggested that every year some 1,000 children may die as a consequence of lacking health insurance.
Why is it broadly accepted that the elderly should have universal health care, while it’s immensely controversial to seek universal coverage for children? What’s the difference — except that health care for children is far cheaper?
Wow. Mr. Smith never met a strawman he didn’t like.
Clearly when you misprepresent your opponents’ positions, it makes it very easy to refute them. It’s just not honest.
Not terrribly shocking as you manage to misrepresent your allies’ positions just as badly.
A credible, princpled argument:
The Consitution does not countenance an “individual mandate” or a “public option.” A law requiring everyone to purchase a healthcare policy–in essence a breathing license–or to require that the labor of one group of people to simply be made the property of others.
Well, I had to register for the draft at 18, get a social security number, a driver’s license, can’t smoke in public places, can’t harm my fellow citizens intentionally, must carry liability insurance on my car. I have no idea what you mean about the labor of one group to be made the property of another, but you could be referring to say, songwriters who get about 1 percent to every 10 percent the suits get for no productive work whatsoever. Not to get too theoretical for you, but Isn’t capitalism all about translating labor into the property of the laborer and others? Maybe you are simply stating what is a conservative principle of sorts, if it can be called a principle: “we have no responsibility for one another.” Terribly shortsighted, that, because it could be extended to law enforcement, fire departments, or, as I said, EMS. All things we pay for that help others and ourselves.
But, isn’t it also a conservative principle to be efficient? So, healthier kids make better educated kids, more orderly classrooms. Insured, more children see a doctor earlier in an illness, acute problems are headed off, the stay in school, don’t drop out, don’t become a greater burden on public hospitals or the criminal justice system, all because we discharged our social responsibility. So you save money.
Registering for the draft is free. It also doesn’t transfer someone else’s labor to be your property.
Not smoking is also free–in fact it’ll save you money.
No one has to drive a car–we all have to breathe.
The Supreme Court larady found, with regard to Poll Taxes, that the government cannot tax us for exercising our fundamental rights. This is a tax on living itself.
Healthcare is not a principle. It is not an essence. It is the product of the labor of others. The passage of the 13th amendment made the assertion of a right to another’s labor unconstitutional.
In a peroperly functioning capitlaist system, labor is transmitted by contract and compensation. The declaration that one has a “right to healthcare” is a demand to own someone else’s property.
You can’t justify the ends, even if it’s so laudable as healthy children, if the means to get thater are beyond flawed.
The sick, sad, part of it is that there are consitiutional ways to do this, and to do this much more efficiently, but the Democrats in Congress aren’t interested. In fact, the prsent plan will leave many of those children you offer up in lieu of argument, yet uninsured.
“‘…We have no responsibility for one another.’” is yet another strawman argument, as well as being a tu quoque fallacy, and deserves no further discussion.
Let me first say thanks for making your arguments in a straightforward, even polite, way.
I’ll begin with your conclusion. I disagree about the tu quoque fallacy. There is a consistent thread in conservative thought that responsibility ends with self-interest, enlightened or not. I refer to that. It is not an objectionable characteristic, it is an objectionable (to me, at least) moral stance. So it’s not ad hominem. Also, you are not making the argument for social responsibility, so I can’t accuse you of failing to live up to your own principle. In other words, you’ve made it impossible for me to commit the tu quoque fallacy.
I can’t justify the ends, even it means healthy children? I’d suggest the the cold application of any ideology when it demands the sacrifice of children’s health is morally bankrupt. It was when the Aztecs did it. It is when anyone does it. Ideologies are human creations, those I hold as well as those you hold. They are imperfect. This is the great recognition of the Framers. And it is why ideologies should always be checked against their human consequences. Now, I’m certain you believe the ultimate consequences of the ideology you advance are more humanly fruitful. We’ll just have to keep arguing about it.
The 13th amendment abolished slavery, as you know. If you are claiming that Medicare currently enslaves Americans by unconstitutionally by making their labor the property of others, well, I’m nearly speechless on that one. Once again, if there is some ideology that can be maintained only if old people die from lack of care, well, the hell with that ideology.
Randian individualists seem to hold that something essential to us individually is always lost when we help others, or that others are necessarily weakened and made less than human when we help them. I’d claim it’s just the other way around: something of our very humanness is lost when we steadfastly refuse to come to the aid of others, to recognize that there is no individual without the other. Making other less than human by depriving them of our aid ultimately takes a toll on the victims of our selfishness, as well.
Finally, I reluctantly make the economic argument: it costs us more to sentence our fellow citizens to ill health. We are paying more, not less, for the privilege of denying care to others. Fiscal conservatism, it seems, would recognize that simple fact.
“The sick, sad, part of it is that there are consitiutional ways to do this, and to do this much more efficiently….”
I’m interested in knowing (1) the nature of those constitutional ways, and (2) why those ways are sick and sad.
I’m also interested in knowing just how the health reform bills now in Congress “… require that the labor of one group of people to simply be made the property of others.”
Doran
What an excellent post, Glenn. No matter how the message is framed, people are dying from lack of health care in the United States of America. How awful – how embarrassing – and how criminal.
Twain, thanks. The GOPer in the comments does a better job than I do at revealing the moral bankruptcy of the right’s views on health care. Quite remarkable, really.
It is a failure of compassion and empathy. RTO’s arguments are sterile and mocking. He wouldn’t piss on me if I were on fire.
As a progressive, I actually think there are legs to RTO’s argument. But I would rephrase his position somewhat. “Because the proposed legislation requires everyone to purchase insurance and that is unjust/unfair/absurd, that is a compelling argument for single payer.”
The libertarian argument against reform is quite popular. Here are some responses to the libertarian argument about health care . Aside from these counterarguments, it is very hard to respond to libertarian arguments because they are not empirical arguments but simply statements of moral absolutism.