Entitlement follows Need

In the 1960s there was a perception that some elderly were not receiving adequate health care. To meet this need, Congress passed Medicare. The same concern was voiced about the poor. To meet their need, Congress passed Medicaid.

The same concern was voiced about those too destitute (or too irresponsible) to buy health insurance, and in the ’80s Congress passed the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, forcing emergency rooms to treat anyone who needed medical attention, regardless of their ability to pay.

Can you say Illegal Immigrants. 🙂

The same concern was voiced about parents who were too well off for Medicare, but who nevertheless couldn’t meet their children’s health care needs, and in the late ’90s Congress passed the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

The message is clear: If you have a need, you are entitled to have it fulfilled at others’ expense.

The reason we continue to move toward socialized medicine is that everyone — including the opponents of socialized medicine — grants its basic moral premise: that need generates an entitlement.

So long as that principle goes unchallenged, government intervention in medicine will continue growing, as each new pressure group asserts its need and lobbies for its entitlement, until finally the government takes responsibility for fulfilling everyone’s medical needs by socializing the health care system outright.

Some believe you can stop this process midstream: The government will intervene only to help those in dire circumstances while otherwise leaving people responsible for their own health care. But that’s an illusion. If need entitles one to the wealth and effort of others, then there is no logical reason why the government should restrict help to some small subset of the “needy,” and refuse to help the rest.

The only way to effectively oppose socialized health care is to reject the morality of need in favor of a genuinely American alternative. According to the American ideal, men are not their brother’s keeper — we are independent individuals with inalienable rights to support our own lives and happiness by our own efforts.

That means taking responsibility for your own medical needs, just as you take responsibility for your grocery shopping and car payments. It means no one can claim that his need entitles him to your time, effort, or wealth.

Where is the willingness to defend this ideal by saying, “Your health care is your responsibility — and if you truly cannot afford the care you need, then you must ask for private charity — not pick your neighbor’s pocket to pay for it”?

But if forcing some Americans to provide unearned health care for others is noble, then is it any wonder that America keeps moving toward socialized medicine? Is it any wonder that, while Republicans loudly oppose Democratic attempts to expand government control over health care, they do not challenge the endless need-based interventions that already exist — and instead push for their own need-based programs (such as Bush’s prescription drug entitlement)?

Those who truly want to fight against socialized medicine in America must realize that it’s time to drop the morality of need and proudly say: I am not my brother’s health care provider. (IBD)

But you will be called heartless, mean-spirited, cruel, greedy, and any number of other personal attacks.

I know.

I have been called all of those who advocating the very same thing.

Personal responsibility.

Such an evil thing.

And only a Sith Lord would propose that people are responsible for even their bad choices. Or the hard choices.

Well Tough.

Life isn’t fair.

Get over it.

I don’t work for the benefit of others. I work to keep me going. So that I responsible for my own success and my own failure.

But I’m just a “cruel”, “heartless”, “kick a cute puppy”, “steal candy from a baby” “right wing extremist scrooge” because I don’t want to share my non-wealth with those who have even less.

No wonder we’ll all end up poor and destitute.

But we’ll be equal.

To warp a Douglas Adams line, “everyone will be poor and no one will be rich, at least no one you can talk about”

The  Apparatchiks. It’s a Russian colloquial term for a full-time, professional functionary of the Communist Party or government; i.e., an agent of the governmental or party “apparat” (apparatus) that held any position of bureaucratic or political responsibility, with the exception of the higher ranks of management.

All those government bureaucrats. They will be well cared for.

And so will the Politicians and their lobbyist feeders.

The machine will be fine.

It’s all the cogs that will be ground under them.

But at least we won’t be mean heartless and cruel.

They will.

Those protectors of our rights and freedoms.

The ones we gave up to them.

Because we didn’t want the responsibility.

We didn’t want to fail.

We didn’t want to see others who had failed.

So if we all fail, and we’re all equal. that’s ok then.

So one will be there to coddle us.

When what we need is someone there to be  motivate us to higher goals. To look up not down.

Like Rocky, you knock us down we get back up.

Not like Roberto Duran, wimpering “No Mas”.

But, what do I know, I’m just mean, cruel and heartless. 🙂