Thursday, August 20, 2009
CARING FOR OTHERS IS LIBERAL?
By definition, I am a conservative, but not totally. None of us fit into the pigeon holes exactly. I believe in conserving, I believe in sticking to budgets, I believe in pay as you go, and this means paying the necessary taxes too. I could never understand the philosophy of cutting taxes, not matched by cutting expenditures. As far as I can see, it never worked; all we did was go into debt. But I was brought up on the commandments of "Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick", as all of you who read the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Koran, and I am sure any volume of the world's religions, were also commanded. Following these principles are what make living in a society possible, along with not murdering, or stealing, and so forth. It is our OBLIGATION. It does not make us "liberal", and not being charitable and caring for your fellow man, because you are not willing to spend the money for that, does not make you conservative. It just means you don't follow the words you probably give lip service to every time you "preach and pray". So why are we labeling those who follow waht everyone preaches "Liberal"? You can be very "Conservative", keep budgets balanced, have a business positive attitude, and stIll perform your obligations to your fellow man, caught in a less fortunate position.
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Okay, but where are you headed with this? If you are arguing in favor of maintaining Medicaid and Foodstamps, that's one thing. But if you are advocating that one group of people pay for the health care of another group of people who are neither the "hungry" nor the "naked," that is something else.
ReplyDeleteHealth care is important, but it is not a "right." Our established rights are such things as freedom of speech, being secure in our homes, protection from unreasonable searches, to choose a religion, even have an abortion. What all of these have in common is that they are limitations on government, but none of them are a right to take from another person. There is no "right" to healthcare because that would create a compulsion on someone else: either the care-giver or the unrelated party to pay. This would be unlike all our other rights, none of which take from other citizens.
You are setting forth a principle, but it is incomplete. Either you are talking about a very basic assertion with which nobody would contest (people should give to the very needy), or you are stating a belief that we need to care for everyone else regardless of that person's actual needs or poor choices. For example, you would not pay for a stranger's cell phone and cable bill. But if that person has a cell phone and a fancy cable package to the exclusion of buying health insurance, would you then buy their insurance?
If we go down that road, why should anybody take responsibility for themselves? Somebody else will always pick up the tab.
You have made my day! Someone is reading what I write. Now to try to comment back as swiftly and succinctly as possible- which is impossible.
ReplyDeleteIs health care a right? T.R. Reid in his book about health care, which is a compilation of studies of health care systems in the first world countries around the globe, came to the conclusion that all these countries agree on one thing, HEALTH CARE IS A RIGHT. They do not all use the same system, some have many private insurers, some have government, but almost every one of these countries rank better than we do in health care provided. So I feel we too must acknowledge that it is a right, along with a host of other rights not in your list, which included only those rights in the Bill of Rights. I want you to stop and think about these.
Educating your children, delivering the mail, providing roads, protecting us with army, navy, airforce, and coast guard, leaping into the breach when something like swine flu comes along, safe guarding our food, (USDA), air quality and water quality, (EPA), providing us with maps, and weather reports, the list of what we don't even question as rights is endless. Is there any of these you would care to do away with?
How do we pay for all of this? With taxes of course. We can't get something for nothing, which is why we are in the bind we are in now. The taxes were cut, and we went from a surplus, to being behind a giant eight ball. We are going to have to raise taxes. You might get comfortable with the idea, by just asking yourself what your expenses would be if you suddenly had to pay for three kids in private schools, if the government, state or federal, took away your right to a free public education, or levied what it costs every time you drove down a highway, or they made only those who fly, pay for all the costs of providing airports, and controllers, and weather reports. We all have the freedom to fly, but it is still a minority who do, but we all share the costs, so that the service is there for all to enjoy if and when they choose.
It is great to be a libertarian, but if a country were to run on each person paying only for what he uses, it would be the most dismal and inefficient country in the world. Think of it, you would refuse to pay school taxes up until the day you want to send your kids to school, but who would have built the schools before your kids arrived, who would have paid to staff them, and what would it cost to you?
When a school bond issue comes up in a town with a heavy preponderance of older people with no children in school, and they don't want to foot the bill so they vote no, would you applaud them? This happened in Sioux City many years ago.
The same is true of health care. Unless you are born at home with no medical assistance, live a totally healthy life and drop dead someday, you will eventually need health care. The way insurance works is to spread the risk over the greatest number possible, including those who have little danger of needing it, (such as the healthy youth in their middle years), because eventually the risk is there, but if the machinery is in place and paid for over a lifetime, without some institution making a profit out of the misery we all eventually face, then it can be affordable, and it can be good.
By the way, who do you think pays for the health care of those who have no insurance or no doctors other than emergency care in the hospitals? All those of us who can afford it do. That is why, when i went to an emergency room because it was an emergency, I got hit with over a thousand dollar bill for a doctor to put some stitches in my leg, that took up less than ten minutes of his time. Hospitals do not turn away people who need their help, even if they can't pay, they recognize the commandment to "heal the sick", but now they must recover their costs from the next unfortunate who walks through the door and can afford to pay his share and theirs.