Just Fix It!
That seems to be the attitude, particularly amongst some who seem to be pushing hard for health care reform. But if government is in such a unique position to reduce our costs for this must needed service, why limit government to health care? Why doesn't government act in everyone's best interest and also provide us cheaper energy, cheaper housing, cheaper food, and cheaper Ipods?
I'm watching President Obama being interviewed by Katie Couric on the CBS Evening News right now and he's promised that he will not pass a health care bill unless it meets three qualifiers:
1) It does not add to the deficit
2) It reduces long term health care costs
and 3) It benefits middle class families
It begs the question, what ever happened to welfare and helping the poor? I'm certainly not going to come out in favor of income redistribution, but it's one thing to say the rich should pay taxes so the poor don't die on the street and quite another to say the rich should pay higher taxes so the middle class can stay in the rapidly expanding homes they can't afford.
I'm watching President Obama being interviewed by Katie Couric on the CBS Evening News right now and he's promised that he will not pass a health care bill unless it meets three qualifiers:
1) It does not add to the deficit
2) It reduces long term health care costs
and 3) It benefits middle class families
It begs the question, what ever happened to welfare and helping the poor? I'm certainly not going to come out in favor of income redistribution, but it's one thing to say the rich should pay taxes so the poor don't die on the street and quite another to say the rich should pay higher taxes so the middle class can stay in the rapidly expanding homes they can't afford.
posted by lonely libertarian at 6:36 PM
2 Comments:
I couldn't agree more, wtf does the middle-class need help for?
Since Obama is President of the world, I'd like to put the idea of subsidizing middle-class medical care in a global perspective:
The IMF ranks 179 countries by per-capita GDP. The 90th country, which is the median richest per-capita country in the world is Belize, per capita income $4,300 annually.
The World Bank pegs the Gross National Income for the world as a whole at $5,510 per person in 2003 (note that this is per person, not per household).
Since median per capita income in the US is over $40,000 annually, our middle-class is about 9X richer than the average human being.
It is one thing to live in 19th century Germany, see people struggling to subsist and reach the conclusions Marx did. It's another thing entirely to live in the richest country, in the richest period in human history and decide that the median voter has a right to never have to worry about his finances.
(In other news, dems are attacking for profit career colleges. If they don't like private competition in education, which has controlled costs so well over the last 30 years, why would health care be different?)
Great info.
It's just super interesting to note how the rhetoric has shifted over the years. For all the bluster of the New Deal, FDR was all about help for those who needed it most. However pointless it may have been, the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) was at least concerned with the dignity of putting folks back to work. And Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty was in fact designed with the idea of lifting people out of poverty. But today the desire for reform seems to be motivated more and more by a desire (perhaps, albeit a subconscious one) to relieve ordinary citizens of the responsibility of making decisions for themselves.
In all the discussion about health care I hear very little about the poor and a lot about what's best for ordinary Americans. If you want to say, "more money for health care for people who can;t afford it," I'd have trouble disagreeing on a philosophical level. But that's not even what the left is about anymore.
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