Many people were perplexed by Senator Mitch McConnell's statement on national television recently that 30 million Americans without health insurance was "not an issue". Likewise there was shock and dismay when during a primary debate a Republican audience cheered at the prospect of an uninsured man dying due to lack of health care.
But these Republican responses are completely logical once we understand some fundamental beliefs that many on the right cherish.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe is one of the leading thinkers of the libertarian right and a Ron Paul supporter. In a recent essay -A Four-Step Health Care Solution - he is not afraid to state boldly what many Republicans think but hesitate to say or write publicly.
Here is the key section of Professor Hoppe's prescription for solving America's health care crisis:
Eliminate all subsidies to the sick or unhealthy. Subsidies create more of whatever is being subsidized. Subsidies for the ill and diseased promote carelessness, indigence, and dependency. If we eliminate such subsidies, we would strengthen the will to live healthy lives and to work for a living. In the first instance, that means abolishing Medicare and Medicaid.
The sentiments of this statement are at the core of Paul Ryan's budget,(modeled on the libertarian philosophy of his hero Ayn Rand). But Ryan is too politically astute to state them publicly (in addition to being a coward). And this is why any health care reform that covers preexisting conditions is anathema to ideologically pure Republcans.
Subsidies create more of whatever is being subsidized.
If someone has heart disease, cancer, or diabetes we cannot and must not provide affordable coverage, since we only promote these diseases while taking resources from the healthy.
Tough medicine: let the sick die so that the healthy may thrive.