I'm for it: I want everyone to have health care. But the issue is not whether it would be good for all to have adequate health care, the issue is how to approach this goal. I can't see that increasing government involvement in health care delivery is the way to go.
Phrases like 'universal health care' and 'affordable health care' obscure the real issue. Who doesn't want affordable health care for all? If you visit the Democrat Party website you will see that they are for 'affordable health care.' That's highly informative, isn't it? It is like saying that one is for peace and against war. Except for the few in whom bellicosity is as it were hard-wired, everyone wants peace. The issue, however, is how to achieve it and maintain it without surrendering that which is of equal or greater value such as freedom, self-respect, and honor. And there is where the real arguments begin.
Or it is like saying that one is for gun control. Almost everyone wants gun control. I want it, the late Charlton Heston wanted it, Charles Schumer wants it. That's not the issue. The issue concerns the nature and extent of gun control. Or it is like saying one is for government. Except for a handful of anarchists, everyone is for government including libertarians and conservatives. The issue is not whether we will have government. The issue concerns it size and scope, power and limits. When slanderous leftists like Charles Schumer portray conservatives as anti-government we need to call them on their lies.
And note that health care affordability is only one value. Availability and quality are two others. If health care is provided to all 'for free' just what sorts of care will they receive and what will be the quality of that care? What good is a 'free' hip replacement if you have to wait two years in pain before you receive it? Or a 'free' quadruple bypass operation if you are dead by the time your number is called? The Canadian snowbirds I talk to don't give me much encouragement as to the desirability of socialized medicine.
Availability of health care is also affected by the willingness of young people to submit themselves to the rigors of medical school, internship and day-to-day practice. Remove the incentives (high pay, high social standing, professional status and independence) and you can expect fewer entrants into the field. Everyone's being insured will not 'insure' that there will be an adequate number of properly trained health care prroviders.
And 'free' to whom? To the unproductive, no doubt. But why should hard-working middle-class types subsidize the bad behavior of those who refuse to take care of themselves? The primary provider of health care is the (adult) individual, who provides it for himself by taking care of himself: by eating right, getting proper rest, exercising, etc.
The problem here is the liberal mentality. Faced with a problem such as obesity, the liberal wants to classify it as a public health problem -- which is absurd on the face of it. No doubt there are
public health problems, and some of them are getting worse because of a failure to control the borders; but obesity is an individual problem to be solved (or left unsolved) by the individual and perhaps a few significant others. If obesity counts as a public health problem, then how could any health problem not count as a public health problem?
You can see from this example the totalitarian nature of the Left: it would intrude itself into every aspect of your life. If you let them expand their control of the health care system, they will not rest until they have total control. Power, as Nietzsche understood, does not seek merely to maintain itself but always to expand itself. And then the powers that be will have an ever-expanding rationale for dictating behavior. Ride a motorcycle? Then you must not only wear a helmet, but a full-face helmet. After all, it's for your own good, and since the government pays the bills, they can justify such limitations on liberty on the ground of keeping medical costs down. Eat red meat? The government might not ban it, but they could very easily slap a sort of 'sin' tax on its consumption. The more socialized the health care delivery system, the more justification for such behavior-modifying disincentives and incentives. And so on for any number of activities and dietary preferences.
The liberal cannot imagine a solution to a problem that does not involve an expansion of the power and intrusiveness of government and a concomitant restriction of the liberty of the individual.
Here is the straight skinny on obesity: if you consume more calories than you burn, then you gain weight. If you burn more calories than you consume, then you lose weight. So if you want to lose weight, eat less and move more. Try it. It works. Of course there are people with special conditions. But I'm talking about the general run of the population. For the most part, people are fat because they refuse to discipline themselves. Liberals aid and abet them in their indiscipline. I am tempted to say that that is part of the very definition of a liberal. The liberal tendency is to shift responsibility from the agent and displace it onto factors external to the agent. So it's Burger King's fault that you have clogged arteries, not your fault.
The problem with liberals is not that they are stupid, but thay they stupefy themselves with their political correctness. The profiling question is a good example of this. Anyone with common sense can see that profiling is an effective and morally acceptable means of both preventing crimes and apprehending criminals once crimes have been committed. But the liberal tendency is to oppose it. Since these opponents don't have a logical leg to stand on, one is justified in psychologizing them.
But I'll leave that for later.
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