Obamneycare

What bothers people about Romney is that, on the issue that the Republicans want to make a central issue in the campaign, Obamacare, Romney can't make the argument that any other Republican can make, which is the argument that the individual mandate is wrong on principle because it's socialistic. We know that he signed and supported an individual mandate in Massachusetts. He can oppose Obamacare on the grounds that it isn't the sort of thing the federal government should do, as opposed to the states. But he can't say that the individual mandate is wrong on principle, but that is what most Republicans believe. So we know Obama is going to ask Romney what, exactly, is wrong with his health care bill, and then what can Romney say?

Immigration, health care, and trusting the government

Joseph A. at Bill Vallicella's site wrote: Victor shows some deep distrust of law enforcement officials - he mentions how there's plenty of Mark Fuhrmans on the police force, and basically asserts that he doesn't trust them to enforce laws like this appropriately. But Victor also typically argues very much in favor of giving government far more authority and responsibility than it now has (see his views on health care, etc.) I just find it odd that he's very worried, deeply worried, about the actions of individual police officers operating at a local level - suggesting that they pose a problem/threat we're not going to be able to adequately address - but not nearly as worried about endowing federal bureaucrats with vastly more far-reaching powers.


Bill replied: That is just inconsistency on Reppert's part. As I said, skepticism about government and its law enforcement agencies is integral to American conservatism. The skepticism is shared by libertarians and paleo-liberals.


I reply: I don't trust the government in the area of health care. I only trust them more than I trust the insurance companies. Having to choose between the devil and the deep blue sea, I choose the deep blue sea.


I believe in sin, which means that I believe that we need to be protected from Leviathan monsters. Sometimes those monsters are governments. Sometimes they are corporations.

The big issue between me and opponents of any kind of health care reform is the fact that insurance companies do exclude on the basis of pre-existing conditions, and make it impossible for many people to get health insurance who can't get it through their employers. They engage in what I consider to be unethical cost-cutting measures to avoid paying claims, including rescinding medical insurance when people get sick. In the end, some people have to be trusted to make these health care decisions, but the market-driven health care economy needs, at the very least, regulation from either God or the government to prevent what I consider to be an injustice. You may not. You may think it's just free market economics, and inability to buy health insurance is no different and no more unjust than the inability to buy a starter home or a late-model car because you can't afford it. But I think it's an injustice, and I have to trust somebody to right that injustice. Unfortunately, it looks like it has to be the government, even though the government, like everything else, is run by sinners.


But, in the case of the immigration law, I think you have a problem if too much is left to "reasonable suspicion." This piece, by conservative Arizona Republic columnist Robert Robb, (the attempt to attribute all opposition to measures like SB 1070 to "liberalism" is about on the same level as attributing all support for it to racism), makes the case that there is a systematic potential for the law to justify fishing expeditions of the sort that Sheriff Joe Arpaio has been doing for years.

C. S. Lewis on Health Care: The Rest of the Story

What would C. S. Lewis say about Obamacare? The linked piece by David Theroux, with references to Lewis's essay "Is Progress Possible: Willing Slaves of the Welfare State," shows that he would have had some concerns about it. Indeed these are the kinds of concerns that conservatives have about the effort on the part of government to help people. But that is only one side of the story. Lewis never says that governmental economic assistance is bad, only that we should count its cost.  The other side of the story is that he concluded, as a result of his correspondence with an American woman about her difficulties in getting health care in our country, that in spite of the hard things to say about the British single payer health care system, (a system that is, of course, far more socialistic than anything Obama has proposed) that it was, in the last analysis, a good idea.

In a letter to Mary Willis Shelburne dated 7th July 1959 (Letters, vol 3, page 1064), Lewis wrote
"What you have gone through begins to reconcile me to our Welfare State of which I have said so many hard things. 'National Health Service' with free treatment for all has its drawbacks - one being that Doctors are incessantly pestered by people who have nothing wrong with them. But it is better than leaving people to sink or swim on their own resources."

I covered this earlier, and of course one of my commentators said that Lewis just went soft in the head. My own view is that he had a balanced perspective: he could see that the British health care system was a mixed blessing, but a blessing nevertheless. I think this is a view that is shared by British conservatives today, who never propose dismantling it, just as American conservatives never say they want to do away with Medicare. Margaret Thatcher, Reagan's counterpart in Britain, didn't try to dismantle it during her administration, in spite of her own conservatism.

Predestination and Health Care

Some people see the passage of the health care bill as the end of civilization is we know it. I think the bill, while not perfect, will do more good than harm. Many of my fellow Christians disagree with me on this. Now, if you are a political conservative and an Arminian, like bossmanham, you can explain the passage of the health care bill in terms of the abuse of human free will. If you are a Calvinist, the nultimately, the bill passed because God, before the foundation of the world, chose, in his infinite wisdom, to decree that the bill should pass 219-213, with the exact wording in it that it in fact has. Who are you, o man, to answer back to God?

Well, I suppose if you're a Calvinist, you've already swallowed the Holocaust and eternal hell as predestined by God, so I suppose to object to the predestination of Obamacare would be straining at a gnat after having swallowed a camel. And yes, Calvinism does not say that God morally approves of all the actions he predestines us people perform, so that, yes, he has a good purpose for doing it, no, we don't know what it is, and no, that doesn't excuse the perpertrators of the offense.

Still, the whole thing strikes me as ironic.

Would universal health care lower the abortion rate?

According to the Washington Post, the answer should be obvious. 

"If that frightened, unemployed 19-year-old knows that she and her child will have access to medical care whenever it's needed," Hume explained, "she's more likely to carry the baby to term. Isn't it obvious?"

Imagine two scenarios:

1) Universal health care is passed, but Roe is not reversed.

2) Roe is reversed, but universal health care is defeated.

Which scenario would reduce the abortion rate more? My money is on 1.

OK, OK, I know that is not all there is to the abortion issue. Prolifers might say that it is just as much about engendering the right attitudes toward fetal life as it is about reducing the number of abortions.

The Health Care Debate At A Glance

HT: Janice Carpenter. Both sides are represented here.

Is spousal abuse a pre-existing condition?

It is for some insurance companies. This is sick.

The Case Against Medicare

Anybody want to get rid of Medicare today? Many of the arguments against health care reform today were used back in the sixties against Medicare by leading Republicans.

C. S. Lewis: Bloody Socialist

A redated post.

HT: John Gibson

In the letter to Mary Willis Shelburne dated 7th July 1959 (Letters, vol 3,
page 1064), Lewis wrote

"What you have gone through begins to reconcile me to our Welfare State of
which I have said so many hard things. 'National Health Service' with free
treatment for all has its drawbacks - one being that Doctors are incessantly
pestered by people who have nothing wrong with them. But it is better than
leaving people to sink or swim on their own resources."

Steve Lovell on the Health Care Debate

I asked British philosopher and fellow Lewis scholar Steve Lovell what he thought of the controversy surrounding health care in America.

Haven't paid any attention to the health care debate in the US. To us in the UK with the NHS the right-wing reaction to Obama's plans seems a little extreme. You have to be seriously right wing over here to say much against the NHS. Obviously everyone wants it to be improved, but no-one wants to scrap it and start over.

It seems as if the people in other countries who have "socialized" medicine never want their systems uprooted and privatized, in spite of all these complaints about death panels and long waits for treatment.

The arguments against Obama's plans can be used against Medicare. Come to think of it, I remember when Medicare was proposed, and they were used against Medicare.

More discussion with Hays on Obamacare

SH: vii) There’s a trade-off between universal care and the quality care. In a private, fee-for-service system, a doctor has no incentive to ration care. He will provide whatever medical service you can afford.


The incentive to ration care only kicks in when you’re attempting to equalize care.

So it’s a trade-off between lesser care for everyone, or better care for some, and lesser care for others.

VR: So we don't have to ration care because it is already rationed by affordability. We don't need death panels. All we need is for people to look inside their wallets and see that they don't have enough money to get the medical care that will keep them alive. I'm so glad the status quo takes such a strong stand for the sanctity of human life.

"Didn't have no welfare state. Everybody pulled his weight." At least, until they got sick.

HMOs and assisted suicide

This is a paper that was given at a right-to-life meeting, and it is a case against an Oregon-style assisted suicide law. But look at what it says about the role HMOs play in protecting the sanctity of human life.

The death panels are already a reality.

Mike Newcomb on Health Care Reform

A local physician who has a left-wing radio talk show weighs in on health care reform.

Some exchange with Hays on Health Care Reform

SH: The death panelists would be presidential appointees. They wouldn’t be elected. And they wouldn’t be subject to Congressional advice, consent, or oversight.

VR: You wouldn't happen to know where this is in the bill, or what Obama statement this comes from?

SH: Indeed, the whole point is to insulate them from the democratic process so that they can make unpopular choices that politicians are afraid to make.
VR: If they are Presidential appointees, and they did something like this, it would fall back on the President's head politically. If someone were victimized in such a way, they would run straight to FOX News and tell their story (assuming the rest of the media is too biased to listen). I certainly would.

The present system is prohibitive for people of modest income who don't have a large enough full-time enployer to provide coverage (I know, since almost all my work has been part time for the last 19 years--full time in total, but part time per employer), there are pre-existing condition exclusions, people get dropped by their insurance companies when the get sick, and there are lifetime caps on what insurance companies will pay for a person's care.

All Obama's public option can do is deny payment, not deny care. To actually deny care you have to have a single-payer system in which the health care and health payment are provided by the same governmental entity. Now, if the denial of payment is tantamount to the denial of care, then we already have death panels. There are treatments the companies won't pay for, and people die as a result. If denial of payment is distinguishable from denial of care, then nothing short of a full and complete single-payer system could possibly result in death panels.

A Simple Test for Arguments Against Obama's Health Care Plan

A very simple problem arises when people attack Obama's health care proposals. If you are afraid "the government might have death panels," "the government might make you wait weeks for care" etc. etc., you then have to show why this either doesn't happen or won't happen if we keep the current system, with insurance companies in control of funding health care.

We know that insurance companies do exclude people because of pre-existing conditions, they do revoke coverage if you get sick, and they do put lifetime caps on the care that they will fund. We also know that they have to pay huge CEO salaries that dwarf even the President's annual paycheck. So if you are going to argue against Obama's plan, just please tell me what you are afraid the government will do and why you think you don't have to worry about United Health or whoever your private insusre is doing the same darn thing.

I'm not saying that there aren't any arguments that can be made against Obama's plan. What I am saying is that you can't make these arguments without comparing what you are objecting to with present reality.

If Hawking were British he'd be dead

Do we already have "death panels?"

This suggests that they do exist, only they are run by private insurance companies. A simple question: both the insurance companies and the government are interested in controlling costs. Why suppose that the government is more likely to deny end-of-life care than private insurance compaines.

In case anyone might get the wrong idea, let me reiterate that I am posting this to ask a question, not to defend an argument for government-run health care.

A response to some comments about the previous post from Triablogue

Oh good Lord. I posed a simple question. I did not advocate the Obama plan, or oppose it. I pointed out that there were some things which were "socialized" and some things which were not socialized, and asked whether health care is something that should be socialized or not socialized. That's it. That's all I said.

It does reflect one thing, and that is that when you look at something and ask whether government should try to provide it or whether it should be provided privately, it's a case by case decision. A simple "capitalism good, socialism bad," or the reverse, won't do the job, unless you are a thoroughgoing, consistent libertarian, or a complete Communist. I mean, is there anyone out there that wants to privatize the military? Besides the CEO of Blackwater?

Vallicella offers some reasons why health care should remain privatized, or rather, why the step in the direction of socialization that has been proposed by the Obama administration is not a good one. However, his post and mine are not parallel to one another. He advocated something, I asked a question, and behind that question are a few observations about the nature of the debate. Only by reading a whole bunch of things in to my statements do you get anything like a basis for the kind of comment you made. I respect Bill's points, and may at some point raise some questions about his post.

I might add that the Democratic proposals have been criticized on the left because they don't replace the insurance companies with a single payer program.

OK, you guys know my political affiliation, but not everything I write is intended as advocacy. My job as a philosopher is sometimes to ask questions, rather than to answer them. In fact, I wrote that as a response to a student's paper proposal to give that student a way of thinking about the issue, and then thought it would be a good blog entry. I do that a lot, actually. Remember that guy Socrates? Oh yeah, he was a charlatan, too. That's why he had to drink hemlock.

But notice two things that happened here. One is that you resorted to name-calling and personal attack. The other is, apparently, you read a huge amount into my statements that are simply not there. This is a serious problem that I have with this blog. It's kind of tough to take you guys seriously when it comes to exegesis, when your interpretation of my statements is nothing but eisegesis.

Health care, cars, and your local fire department

Is health care something like a car, which most of us think we can have only if we can afford one, or like having a fire department available to put a fire out if your house in burning down, which is and, we think should be paid for by the government.