While we watch the GOP’s pathetic attempt to “fix healthcare”, Eric Sherman has published a great take-down of the entire charade for Forbes. The focus is healthcare — and how freakin’ insane many of the GOP’s statements have been. But as his clear-minded logic exposes the utter irrationality behind the conservative position, it echoes into the bigger debate we’re not having in this country.
He points to some incredibly telling statements by GOP leaders — moments where they show just how little they understand the free market health insurance system they champion. Our POS-POTUS provides ample fodder with this great summation of how health insurance works for every day Americans:
“So pre-existing conditions are a tough deal. Because you are basically saying from the moment the insurance, you’re 21 years old, you start working and you’re paying $12 a year for insurance, and by the time you’re 70, you get a nice plan.”
Besides the usual Trumpish nonsensical rambling, this is a clear example of someone so out of touch with reality that he shouldn’t be allowed to even speak publicly about the subject much less have the power of the executive branch where he could, on a whim, sabotage the ACA’s health care market. (Yeah, and he would, he’s already weakened the mandate.)
But the bigger problem is the ideology, the beliefs that drive conservative policy. It would be fine if conservative thinking only infected the 1% who live in their own bubble, only those who don’t realize that $12 a year health insurance for 21 year olds utter fantasy. If they were the only ones embracing the conservative political agenda, we’d be fine.
I digress… The most important part of this brilliant piece in Forbes is where Sherman smashes conservative ideology to bits using its own (irrational) premises.
First, there's the assumption that if you aren't wealthy, it's your fault, no conditions that greatly favor one group over another exist, our economic system does not try to make use of low-wage workers to increase the purchasing power of the middle class and profits of investors, and that poor people don't work and haven't. Also that if you're not wealthy, or reasonably in the middle class, your life has no value. All of this is nonsense if you pay the least attention to a world larger than your immediate concerns.
Kudos to Eric Sherman for absolutely obliterating the conservative position on healthcare in this statement!
Once we look at healthcare against the backdrop of our societal structure — after the utterly unsupportable premises at the foundation of modern conservative beliefs have been exposed— there is no going back. It becomes crystal clear that access to healthcare should be universal.
As far ethic values go, they should include the right not to have an overall system put a boot on your neck and then complain that you're not getting up quickly enough. Let's have a healthcare structure that doesn't require people to go into hock or wonder whether they can meet their elevated premium payments. Every other developed country in the world has managed to deal with this issue. Are we that inept? Or do others mean that little to us?
So, I ask, which is it?