Wherein I Explain the Talking Point
And on the whole, yes, I do respect you and even if I disagree with you, on the whole, I think you’ve researched your opinions and you’ve got good reasons for thinking the way you think. On health care, I feel you are off-base and even though I think your opinions on health care are incredibly misguided (primarily because you dismiss or write-off many of the huge negatives and gaps in service in the health care system as is, while being irrationally fearful of almost any alternatives) for the most part am willing to chalk it up to a policy debate and not make character judgments based on it.
The thing that really gets me, though, about this specific conservative talking point about how heartless Obama is because he’s not willing to provide the same health care to everyone that he has himself, is that it is so incredibly hypocritical. Most of the rhetoric on healthcare from the right has consistently been about maintaining or creating a system where the best healthcare will still go to the wealthy and the poorest will not have access at all. To draw attentions to the inequities present in Obama’s proposal, with that faux gasp of shock (and perhaps you aren’t doing that, but certainly those you quote and others using this rhetoric are), while ignoring the inequities in the systems they themselves propose or support…well… While I think your position on this issue is more the result of, I’m sorry to say it, ignorance—in some ways willfully so, and in other ways very genuinely not—than callousness, and I’m sorry for the negative portrayal of your opinions, it doesn’t stop the commentary itself, from you or anyone else, from being strikingly hypocritical.
Let me try to explain where this talking point is coming from.
Lots of people have health insurance through their employers. Most people are not completely satisfied with this health insurance, but many (particularly of libertarian or conservative persuasions) believe that the health insurance they currently have is better than what the government will ultimately provide. Many of these people also believe that government health insurance will cause employee plans to disappear, forcing them to sign up for the government health plan. Now, those on the left might say—hey, this is a crisis, everyone has to make a sacrifice … yes, your health coverage may not be as good as government coverage, but it’s more important to make sure that coverage is available to everyone. But here’s the deal … Obama isn’t just a guy with a good health plan; he’s a guy who will be worth tens of millions of dollars. So while the common man will likely be forced to sacrifice for sake of the currently uninsured, Obama himself isn’t going to sacrifice. He will still get the world’s best health care. It is easy for Obama to force others to make a sacrifice that he himself will not have to make. And because it’s so easy for him to do this, I (and others) believe that he won’t be terribly careful or considerate or respectful when this sacrifice is made. That’s why the anecdote matters.
I’ve been self-employed for several years, and before I got married, I had to go out and buy my own health insurance. Believe me, I know the current system is messed up … it’s messed up for all kinds of reasons that you and I wouldn’t agree about. But a lot of us think we are about to mess things up a whole more. I believe this will have real, and likely tragic, repercussions. There are good sacrifices and bad ones; I believe Obama is going to force us to make some really bad ones.
