Universal Health Scare

 

 

August 9, 2009        

 

 

 

 

I’m against universal health care because I believe strongly that it’s a Trojan Horse for a larger socialist agenda.  

 

It’s essentially affirmative action, and it is therefore destructive. It rewards bad behavior. It’s very seductive, though, since it would supposedly “solve” the “health care crisis,” and “who could be against that?” It’s a Trojan Horse in that it’s a way of presenting you with something you must not be against if you’re decent: healthy kids. But once this universal health care becomes the law of the land, another precedent will have been set whereby the government’s function is to live your life for you, to give you guarantees of ultimate support. But a government that gives you everything you need to live will want something in return: unreasonable control over your life. I don’t know about you, but lame free health care from the government (and all those forms to fill out!) is not a good exchange if I have to give up either my independence or my soul to get it.  

 

Universal health care is affirmative action, too, in that it’s a handout to people who have done little or nothing to obtain it — it will further enable a self-destructive underclass that prides itself on its ethos of failure. That’s how much you care about people?! It will further breed that misguided culture, since if one accepts the necessities of life for free, without effort, one misuses them, one becomes dependent on them, and one loses self-sufficiency and self-reliance.  

 

Furthermore, universal health care will not solve the so-called crisis in health care. The care it provides will be lousy, first of all, who are we trying to kid, and moreover, it will further strain an already bursting social welfare budget. That means less of what you want. Quality will go down and prices will go up. That is, it will make costs go up since the government guarantees payment, and will be overcharged routinely. When there’s no competition, and therefore no choice, prices go up. And, inversely, the quality will go down, for the same reason: without competition, there’s no accountability from the marketplace, there isn’t a reason for the entrepreneur to bust a gut. It is in the private sector that we find competition, and it is precisely that competition that would keep prices relatively low and quality high.  

 

In the larger scheme of things, universal free health care will foster irresponsible behavior, will be yet another program to further dissuade people from attempting to achieve the dignity of full self-sufficiency, and will trap people, tragically, in a cycle of failure, like a bird that never had the courage to fly. The abiding, underlying purpose of universal health care is to fully implement a social welfare state which would enable us to finally feel good about ourselves. Many people assume without argument that such a state is the humanitarian thing to do. But we must avoid the rearview mirror in that case, to avoid the sight of what we have wrought, that is, the damage to others.  

 

The cluelessness of universal health care is best epitomized by a recent cover photo of Edward Kennedy on one of our weekly newsmagazines: he’s looking off blankly into the distance, as if he vaguely sees the future out there, but he’s not looking at the camera — he’s totally detached from the destruction he brings to the lives of blacks, Hispanics, and poor whites as he preens, lapidarian, for the moral mirror.