Author: Shannon Rodgers (25 Articles)
First, there are going to be some changes coming and I hope you like them. For example, I know that some of you have trouble seeing the small print I have been using, and I hope this one makes it easier for all of us to read.
Second, thank you for your support here. I am heartened by people who challenge me but still continue to receive these emails. Even the likes of Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson had friends who rolled their eyes in disagreements with them. Sometimes they prevailed in changing minds, on both sides. So, thank you again.
Speaking of the founders, why did they choose a gold standard for our dollar? Why did they decide on limited government? Why did they form a constitutional republic instead of the other options available and debated? Because they knew that good intentions do not good outcomes make. They had as a guiding principle that people help people, that people produce wealth that can be used to help people. Government cannot do these things. They debated principles, not desires. There did not exist an example of what we now enjoy, but what liberals/progressives/socialists/etc., preach as superior, were common, as they are now. They chose to try the principled approach of building a better mouse trap to trapping mice, instead of the centrally planned mouse-eradication-and-child health-education-security-program. They were right. We lead the world as a result.
The debate today is between those who want to do the most good for the most people, and those who want to be able to claim at least they tried to provide the same amount of good to everyone. The first tolerates the idea that the misery of some will be well off of the bell curve (but still above a minimum standard) so long as the average is maximized. The second tolerates the idea that all will suffer some so long as no one is misery free until all are.
Is it bad to offer affordable food, high in food value, and can sustain you for little cost? Certainly not. But what if that food is a Big Mack and Fries? This is dense in calories and relatively high in nutritional value (compared to the same dollar amount of fruit). It is really cheap. There are people in the world killing one another over lower quality food. So what is the problem? Cheap and easy does not equate to best.
Is it bad to give illegal aliens emergency health care? Certainly not. If a pregnant woman shows up at an emergency room having difficulty in labor, she should get all the help available where she shows up. Medicaid has such a provision. People who come to America contrary to our laws are not allowed to receive Medicaid benefits, except in emergencies. Life threatening labor was once a standard for emergency care. That changed and then all labor was an emergency. Then prenatal care. The medical program for people too poor to pay for their own health insurance or health care, covers prenatal vitamins for illegals under the guise of an emergency. Their intentions are good.
The result is the loss of truly emergent care for the people the program was intended to cover. The program cannot be sustained and will be unable to pay its bills within 3 years.
What does this have to do with principles? Is it not a generally American principle that the hungry should be fed, that the sick healed? So what could my beef be?
We no longer debate the principle of helping people. Americans are the most helpful on the planet, in large part because we can afford to be. Should you help someone else as a matter of principle? I think so. Should you point a gun at someone else and force them to help someone else, as a matter of principle? I think not, nor do you, I suspect. Do you think we should put a person in jail if he refuses to borrow the money that their children will pay back, to provide prenatal vitamins to illegal aliens? I doubt you think so, but we do just that. Will our children be better able to borrow the money to continue to do so while burdened with the loan payments we leave them?
Once we agreed to help one another, shouldn’t we have moved on to debating what method will do the most good with the resources we have? In our charity, shouldn’t efficiency with limited resources be a guiding principle? Shouldn’t we choose the best system even when it is not perfect?
Medicare and Medicaid account for more than half of all Federal spending. It is inefficient, full of fraud and corruption, and broke. Politics, not principle made it so. Medicare was estimated to cost about $65 million when created but rose to cost hundreds of BILLIONS, not because the establishing principles changed but because of politics. The prescription drug program pushed by President Bush was supposed to cost no more than $100 million or so, and is now in the BILLIONS. Yet, we are told that we have to extend such coverage to people who can pay for their own insurance or health care to CONTROL COSTS. There are no examples where costs go down as government distance from those served increases. Our only hope is to deal with these things locally, and pay the price of success and failure locally.
Nearly all of us, 85% or more, fit into the group of people who can pay for their insurance or health care. This is evidenced by the fact that we do, as painful as it is. Will a government bureaucrat be more interested in controlling your costs than you are?
The number tossed around is that 45 million people are not covered by insurance. Note, some 300 million of us are. A large portion of the 45 million are people who can afford insurance but choose to keep the money instead, the 20 somethings who are healthy and fearless, and frankly would be wasting their money on insurance they will, on average, not use.
Another large group are people who don’t go to the doctor since they are not sick and do not sign up for programs like Medicaid even though they qualify. Another smaller group includes people like Bill Gates who do not need insurance because they can afford to pay for the health care they need when they need it. The rest are illegal aliens and other fugitives.
I challenge you to find someone who does not fit into one of these categories. Please do not point to someone with a car, air conditioning, a cell phone, etc., and tell me that they don’t have the money for health care. They have different priorities than me, but they can eat the Big Mack if they want. If they want the Big Mack and the cell phone and a car payment and car insurance instead of health insurance, it is their decision, not my obligation.
So, how can we put the overwhelming majority of us into a broke program, full of inefficiency, which already is larger than all other federal spending including national defense as a matter of principle, and fine or imprison those who do not want to participate as a matter of principle, all without increasing spending? We cannot, despite the apparent sincere INTENT of those who claim we can.
No one is telling us how this can be done, just that we should give it a chance. I heard a spokesperson for the White House actually say that we should not “pre-judge” the effectiveness of the program until it is up and running. Ever “pre-judge” if a car would meet your needs before you bought it? Ever buy anything in any other way? Think a slow, smoking, outdated, tractor-trailer would make you a good commuter car? Shouldn’t you give it a chance? I once bought some magazines from a child selling them for school. They were so effective in improving my life that I can’t remember what they were. I did not care, I was being charitable. Would I have done so if I had to hire a government employee to do it for me? Would you?
Why would we allow our system of free enterprise and charity, which outperforms the rest of the world’s, to be experimented with? It is not even an experiment. There is no offer to check the progress of this change against the previous arrangement with the intent of restoring the old one if it proves to have been better. On the contrary, despite the fact that the Great American Experiment has been unimaginably successful by holding personal freedom and personal property rights above the good intentions of government, the left seems desperate to go back to central planning over individual freedom in misplaced hope that improvements can be made.
Is there a perfect solution? Certainly not. Is Nancy Pelosi likely to have a better idea than the millions of us, an idea which we are too dumb to realize is better and must be forced to accept even though she will not volunteer or be forced to do so? Why would we trade the best system in the world; one where pregnant women risk their lives and their unborn to travel here to be treated; one where for every person who comes here from another country for treatment, they leave thousands behind who would do so; the one that has served us better than the alternatives in every way it has been allowed; for a system like the ones we turned away from and left to languish? Why would we trade our system for one like the one in Mexico, when the Mexicans risk so much to come here when they need medical attention? Doing so would decrease the number of Mexican women who can be helped in difficult pregnancies.
It would be like changing the route of a marathon when you are miles ahead of the second place runner to one that forces you to go back with the bulk of the pack.
If you raise chickens to feed yourself and give the extras to feed some hungry, you still have to hatch new chicks or you will all go hungry. You cannot eat the hens, or the eggs, at a rate faster than the brood can sustain without starving. If we kill the system of creating the wealth we use for charity because it disproportionately favors the givers over the receivers, we will not be able to afford to be givers, to the ruin of the receivers. When resources (profits) are artificially limited and inefficiency artificially tolerated, our ability to help the helpless and unfortunate decreases.
Who have we helped when our intentions have trumped our principles? Are we willing to trade our principles to soothe our desires? If so, we surrender both.