I'm for universal health care: 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. We need less government inefficiency and more market discipline. That will bring prices down while safeguarding liberty, a value liberals, despite their name, seem insufficiently appreciative of. The so-called 'public option' will lead to no option: you will have no option except to use the government plan because private insurers will most of them have been driven out of business. And so only the superrich will get the best care. The phrase 'public option' is a piece of Orwellian bullshit. Descriptive accuracy favors 'government takeover health plan' or something like that.
If the Obama crew were serious about the so-called health care 'crisis' they would tackle the two logically prior issues: tort reform and border control. But they don't dare offend the trial lawyers or the Reconquista crowd. So their 'plan' is no real solution at all. It is just an extension of governmental power and a further 'empowerment' of those whose livelihoods are tied to government handouts and government jobs.
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. Almost everyone wants peace. The issue, however, is how to achieve it and maintain it. And there is where the real arguments begin. We conservatives say: Si vis pacem, para bellum. Our liberal pals disagree strenuously. They think peace is achievable through weakness and appeasement. A peace worth having is not attainable in that way.
Or it is like saying that one is for gun control. Almost everyone wants gun control. I want it, Charlton Heston wants, Charles Schumer wants it. That's not the issue. The issue concerns the nature and extent of gun control. Or can you think of anyone who wants there to be no legal restrictions on the manufacture, distribution, ownership and use of firearms?
Silly liberals say that conservatives are against government. Nonsense. Anarchists are against government. Everyone else on the political spctrum is for government. The issue for non-anarchists is not whether we will have government but the nature and extent of government.
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?
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 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?
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. Nonsense on stilts.
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.
End of rant. I am now sufficiently warmed up for Obama's address to a joint session of Congress later today. I can't wait.