Michelle Malkin wonders, “Who deserves government-subsidized health care?“
That’s a good question. The short answer, which many of us would agree on, is this: only those who cannot provide for their own basic health care. “Cannot” is one of the key words in that proviso; “basic” is another.
The devil is in the details, or the definition of those words.
Consider the key word in Michelle’s question. “Deserve” has many connotations in modern use, many of them inappropriate. The reality is that to deserve something is to have earned it.Â
deserve - to merit, be qualified for, or have a claim to (reward, assistance, punishment, etc.) because of actions, qualities, or situation: to deserve exile; to deserve charity; a theory that deserves consideration.
By that standard only people who produce “deserve” government subsidies. Logically this is true considering the government’s “revenue” is actually wealth confiscated from those who created it.
(And what is money? A product of time and the usefulness of that time. An approximation of what men understand to be the value of life, in other words.)
Yet most Americans do want to help the truly needy, so let’s pursue that goal. To do so we must dispense with the use of the word deserve and consider others instead:
gift - something given voluntarily without payment in return; or, something bestowed or acquired without any particular effort by the recipient or without its being earned
charity - generous actions or donations to aid the poor, ill, or helpless
Government subsidies don’t really meet the standard of those words either since voluntary generosity has nothing to do with taxation. Government actions, as I was recently reminded, have nothing to do with consent, altruism, or love.
In fact I was told that the very idea of voluntary giving is a relic of an age past and is hated by those who prefer to substitute legal directives as a means of providing for the poor. For them it is about force and using it to do what they think is right.
By taking charity off the table we must turn to two words that, devoid as they are of any personal emotion, liberals have made their own:
need - a condition marked by the lack of something requisite; or, a lack of something wanted or deemed necessary
welfare - financial or other assistance to an individual or family from a city, state, or national government
Deserve, gift, and charity are out; needs and welfare are in. But you knew that already. The politics of entitlement have made that plain for decades.
To paraphrase Michelle, who needs health care welfare?
Earlier I said government health assistance should only be provided to those who cannot provide basic care for themselves. This rule still seems to hold given the discussion thus far.
The correct definition of need is something that is required, not something desired - two entirely different things.
We need to be clear about our words, though. When we say that a person “cannot” provide for themselves we are only being truthful if that person is actually unable to do so. If providing for his/her own living is merely unpleasant, undesirable, or inconvenient to a person, that is not the same thing, is it?
Principle: The government ought not compel us to surrender our earnings to those who are unwilling to work for their own.
Still, we’re told that we must provide for the poor (so long as we do not rely on medieval charity to do so). If we accept this, the intersection of these statements that we should provide welfare for those who cannot earn it while ignoring whose who can and refuse to do so.
Further, those who pay for welfare services should not be compelled to provide more than is truly needed. Need is that which is required - not what is desired - and this informs us as to the standard that government should strive for when contriving to perform charity.
“But the poor deserve the same health care as the well-to-do!” Do they? To deserve something is to have earned it. Try a different word.
“Then the poor need the same health care as the well-to-do.” Closer, yet still not right.
Someone very close to me recently said, “No one in America should die because they didn’t have access to health care.”
Sadly, this is untrue - God knows that we’re all dying; all our health care efforts do is alter the time of our passing.
Does that mean that we shouldn’t provide health care to the poor? No, but as a nation we are not obligated to do so. Our obligation to love is at a personal level. That we do provide services for the poor is because of our generosity - whether government expansionists approve of the word or not - and of our love.
The real question is: Whose money are we willing to love the poor with, other peoples’ or our own? The difference between a program of government taxation and distribution and personal charity is simply who is paying. The choices are:
- Those who produce wealth
- Those who care enough to give to the needy
Champions of the former usually advocate their cause by claiming that the well-to-do have resources to spare, that they don’t need the money they earn. The “rich” are, from this perspective, morally obligated to do their part for the common good.
(It’s an interesting line of thinking coming as it does from a group that spends a lot of time claiming that government can’t legislate morality. But the contradiction is lost on them.)
This logic says that the people who produce wealth must provide for those that do not; otherwise they are bad people. Yet there is no virtue in the modern system of tax-and-distribute, for neither the gladness of giving nor the thankfulness of receiving can exist in it. There is only the resentment of the robbed and the hatred of those who are given an unwarranted largesse and fear its being snatched away again.
The penultimate irony is that, like a clock that’s correct twice a day, the statists are right - we are obligated to care for our brothers.
But their conclusion, devoid as it is of the spiritual, is right for all the wrong reasons. The result is that the soulless generosity they disburse so freely results only in bankruptcy - moral bankruptcy for the recipients and economic bankruptcy for the ones they tax.
Government welfare can aid bodies but it can never cure souls; instead it kills them. Those who disagree would do well to consider the history of these programs and their results.
The answer, Michelle, is no one who has any choice should be subjected to either side of the welfare system. Those who must use it should, without guilt or shame, but never lightly and only after exhausting all of their capabilities and the generosity of their true neighbors.
Marc: “The devil is in the details, or the definition of those words.”
I might have been inclined to say the devil wrote those words, but whatever. Let’s focus on the details. Unfortunately, you don’t seem to be a detail man. You claim that “deserve” is the “key word in Michelle’s question.” Then you:
1. Put forward a definition: to deserve = to have earned
2. Cite a definition that says something rather different: to deserve = “to merit, be qualified for, or have a claim to (reward, assistance, punishment, etc.) because of actions, qualities, or situation”
3. Claim that this means that to deserve = to have produced (what?–I don’t know)
None of these “definitions” are equivalent. At all.
Back to square one, eh?
This is an unexpectedly thoughtful analysis, considering that it dignifies Michelle Malkin’s work. However, I take issue with conclusions reached even if I respect the process. Here are a few points to consider.
–Medical welfare and even socialized medicine are not exclusively issues of morality. It is intellectual fraud to work from the assumption that there is no pragmatic upside to promoting public health. Don’t America’s wealthiest citizens “deserve” to live in a society with less contagion, enjoy returns on investments in companies with diminished rates of medical absenteeism and underperformance, experience an atmosphere of increased public morale, etc.? Malkin sleazily reduces this complex issue to class warfare, when in fact there are universal interests at stake in health care policy.
–The core question also cuts both ways. Why does no one on the conservative side of this ever confront the deeper truth in their stance — “which American citizens deserve to be left to die on the street for failure to meet the economic demands of their own medical care?” Do any of us? It seems like a much bigger presumption to doom even the least likeable of our fellow Americans than it is to presume taxes ought be collected to uphold a social minimum in the health care sector.
–What is this premise about “producing wealth” anyway? Do America’s most fortunate citizens excrete greenbacks? A stable society is a prerequisite to any concentration of wealth that is not under constant threat from rival gangsters or warlords. Whichever of the nation’s great fortunes were not inherited were still not produced in a vacuum. Banks, courts, universities, roads — the list of support systems society provides could run into pages if it were comprehensive and highly specific. Just as the core question can be viewed from a much different perspective, so can this. To what extent should society permit individuals prospering in the environment of security and support it provides to concentrate material resources under their personal control?
I have no trouble, on -either- practical or moral grounds, defending the position that every American citizen deserves free access to reasonable preventative and curative medical care. Where I do have trouble is imagining in what context any American citizen deserves a personal income in excess of $1 billion per year. I see no practical upside to such concentrations of wealth. It seems the morality of it rests on some Randian cliche about great wealth springing purely from the will of individuals, without any regard at all for the necessary social context surrounding such accumulations. What am I missing about the vital importance of promoting billionaire culture and/or the relative unimportance of alleviating preventable suffering and death among my own citizenry?
Great idea Demonseed. How about we cap income to some modest level since it is inconceivable that somebody should make a lot of money. What is the incentive for people to work harder…everybody is equal, all outcome must be equal, its only fair…right? Wake up, life isn’t fair! You might also want to check out the amount of money and effort that Gates Foundation spends to help people…..I guess Bill Gates is just one of those people who don’t care about anybody but himself.
Sluggo, you don’t need to flail about on a slippery slope every time someone suggests market economics might not be endowed with divine perfection. Is it really the best you can do to justify anarcho-capitalism with “life isn’t fair?” Do you understand that pretty much all of the civilized world has implemented socialized or even nationalized medicine without anything like the loss of incentive to be productive you assert must follow from it? If all the billionaires of our nation were told their income would be capped at $100 million per year, would they retire out of disinterest in such a pittance?
It sounds to me like the best argument for letting robber barons concentrate vast amounts of resources under their personal control is that they might one day decide to do something that benefits someone outside their household. Why go through such a convoluted route when any honest commentator already knows there are alternatives that will not abolish or even diminish the desire of plutocrats to be involved in business. On the other hand, the absence of health care resources for the working poor does deprive industry of their input. Believe it or not, it takes more than executive scheming to make an economy grow. Someone has to do the grunt work too, and right now our grunts are worse off than they were in 1970. This is good for business how?
I guess I’m glad to part of the “uncivilised” world where personal responsibility still matters. I guess my preference always is to minimize the waste inherent in large government programs like socialized medicine. In the “civilised” world, you don’t need to exercise personal responsibility, but someone has to pay for that….what is the income tax rate in the Netherlands? Isn’t there also a large sales/VAT?
The key in this whole s-CHIP discussion is where does personal responsibility and decision making apply. Programs like s-CHIP are a type of welfare and designed to help people get back on their feet, NOT A WAY OF LIFE.
Yeah, damn those kids for being born to non-rich parents, right? The lottery of birth is a monumentally stupid reason to decide which children get cancer treatment and which do not. Because that stupidity is so powerful and obvious, charities actually do a fair job of picking up the slack — in the narrow niche of pediatric cancer treatments. Philanthropy could do more to take humanity forward if it were not in so much demand to plug the gaps in the status quo.
Principles of personal responsibility are all well and good, but reasonable adults will not take those principles to unreasonable extremes. Should we abolish the Interstate Highway system, since it coddles all those lazy folks who don’t have the initiative to build their own roads and bridges? Should we abolish educational grants based on the idea that only people who have large sums of money merit advanced degrees?
It is fair to argue that economic inequality serves some useful purpose. Yet it is no less fair to argue that distribution of wealth also serves some useful purpose. If public figures actually were talking about standardizing national incomes, of course there should be staunch resistance in the name of preserving incentives in labor markets. When executive pay tends toward multiples -hundreds- of times greater than compensation packages for laborers in the same organization, the masses are made to suffer for no greater cause than the selfish whims of a subset of wealthy individuals.
This also goes back to Malkin’s (among many others) tendency to distort the debate by implying that all of America’s rich folks really want to live in a cutthroat society. It happens that there is a drumbeat of political noise promoting this view, but in reality wealthy people are not at all of one mind when it comes to national health care policy. Many of our richest citizens would happily endure tax increases in exchange for less exposure to contagion in public, less absenteeism among employees, etc. Should their wishes be swept aside because there are also some rich people who are strident about perpetuating for-profit health care as the dominant American paradigm?
Also, if caring for citizens who are both poor and sick is such an affront to some sort of sacred supply-side doctrine, how is it that elected officials get a pass for spending hundreds of billions of dollars each year on irrelevant (next generation air superiority fighters) or do-nothing (missile defense shield) defense projects? This nation could implement a downright lavish national health service and cut taxes if we had the good sense to stop running in an uncontested arms race. Except for aerospace contractors and insider politicians, those expenditures help no one in any way.
To say that Americans cannot accomplish what dozens upon dozens of other nations already have in the field of public health is to suggest that we are a distinctively stupid people. I happen to believe differently, and hold that we could learn from the results of others and implement the best national health care policy in the world . . . if only we could overcome ideological throwbacks right out of the Red Scare along with constant muddling of actual freedom with supply-side economic dogma.
Thank goodness it is not up to the hard-hearted Ms. Malkin to determine who is deserving of health insurance and who isn’t. Maybe she thinks we also need to examine whether seniors own property before granting those other foul excesses of socialism- Medicare and Social Security. Lets make anyone who needs government help wear ashes and sackcloth before we agree to help out with her precious tax dollars.
Why do conservatives like Malkin balk at helping out working class kids, yet never blink an eyelash at weapons systems like the Osprey? This wonder of wonders cost 20 billion, has been deemed to be worthless for wartime usage, and has taken over 10 years to produce. It is so overpriced and impractical that even war hawks like Dick Cheney tried to prevent its production. But Malkin and others like her were too busy making sure that Graeme Frost truly is “deserving” of an insurance policy financed by SCHIP.
That does make sense to me Kim. Doesn’t it to you? When people don’t have mch on the bank, but own a house of $1.5 million at the same time, I don’t quite see how they can expect other people to pay for their health care.
The Frosts don’t own a house of 1.5 million.
And you could ask the same thing about a thousand different things the govt pays for. Like the Osprey at a cost of 20 billion. If given a choice between investing in the nation’s future (our kids) and padding defense contractors pockets in order to produce worthless aircraft— how can you justify the latter? Why are the right wing pundits like Malkin not concerned at all about huge waste in the defense budget?
Really the Osprey was never cancelled because the contractors had too much influence over Congress. Even Darth Cheney thought it was too expensive and impractical. Where is the outrage from the party of smaller government on this one?
The reason I lean moderate-right is because I see the balance between capitalism and government about at the range William Kristol endorsed when he wrote “Two Cheers for Capitalism”. Encouraging profit and wealth accumulation is a necessity, though the public good must be acknowledged as valid and necessary. If everything we learned about life occurred in kindergarden, then “The Little Red Hen” should inform us that overtaxing overproductivity is a recipe for a stale existence.
That’s overtaxing productivity, not overproductivity.
“Even Darth Cheney thought it was too expensive and impractical. Where is the outrage from the party of smaller government on this one?”
Umh. How’s that for contradicting oneself in two sentences?
And - I oppose alll excessive spending. Whether they’re for helping people who should take responsibility for their own lives or for military tools.
To finish the thought, government subsidized health care may upset an already teetering balance. As Dave Schuler recognizes, it will necessarily create more demand without any corresponding increase in supply. The payment methodology won’t change the market dynamics- health care will be very expensive, whether the government pays the bills or not.
Been saying that since Schuler was writing with crayons, kreiz, as in close on two decades. Pumping more money into the system doesn’t really do much of anything to expand actual supply, it just creates more demand. It might flatten some gross pricing disparities between differing treatments, done right, and thereby promote some efficiencies. But the overall cost of the entire system would rise. Period. Cold equation.
The bottom line (and yes I will keep saying this until everyone is sick of it, and then I’ll say it some more) is that supply is limited, demand is unlimited, and the only real question is what form(s) of and structure(s) of rationing we as a society decide to employ in distributing that supply.
No magic wand. No pie in the sky. No free lunch.
I don’t see the reasonableness of requiring that people tend to their own medical needs at all. Is it reasonable that when some people are diagnosed with cancer they incur a major, but manageable expense, while others are compelled to choose between refusing treatment or taking their families into poverty? The law of the jungle is all well and good for people who want to go live in jungles. For people who want to live in a modern civilization, the law of the jungle is a shoddy substitute for either pragmatic political thought or basic human decency.
National health services have not made the people of foreign nations irresponsible in any meaningful way. For that matter, the American for-profit approach does much more to fatten the wallets of insurance industry middlemen than it does to exploit the purported advantages of market economics. How many people shop around for general care? How many for emergency care? Also, how big a hit does our national economy take because preventative care is a consumer spending decision rather than an expectation of all American lifestyles?
The personal responsibility argument seems to be moralizing, yet it is moralizing over the corpses of working class American citizens. Yet I’m all for settling questions like this on a pragmatic level, as I understand that morality is not a universal thing. I may not worship money, but I respect freedom of religion enough that I would not bar others from worshiping money. However, not even Mammon can alter reality in such a way that the social and economic disruptions present without universal health care become lesser than the social and economic disruptions required to finance universal health care. Even if one disputes that point, surely wealthy citizens who share my opinion have every right to advocate for political change that resolves these problems. I might even go so far as to argue that all citizens also are right to make those arguments.
Explain what you mean by contradiction, MVDG. My point is that if Malkin and the other right wing pundits are so outraged about a kid from a family that makes 45,000 getting free medical insurance, why are they silent about the billions being wasted by boondoggles like the Osprey?
Isn’t it because defense contractors contribute more to Republicans than they do to Democrats?
No magic wand. No pie in the sky. No free lunch. Don’t know about the crayons, but I endorse this fully, Tull. Right on, man.