"The Compassion Thing" - from Facebook

The following are excerpts from a "debate" I had with a right wing true believer on the Facebook fan page of Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln. I will not identify him (thus possibly inviting one of those "frivolous" lawsuits) but his words, which I was responding to, appear in quotations before my remarks:

" May I remind you that many "wealthy" individuals penalized by this legislation work very hard and are business owners, both small and big,and who are not living extravagantly."----

Problem is you and I have different definitions of the word "wealthy". I grew up in Bergen County, NJ. One of the wealthiest counties, per capita, in the United States. Where I come from, the wealthy don't own small businesses. I am talking about the top .01% of Americans who reside in towns like Alpine, Franklin Lakes or Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. They can flick your "small business" off of them like swatting at a mosquito. I am friends with many of them.

And "penalized", no. Most of them understand the problem well enough to know that you can't solve any one health care issue without taking on the whole. If you don't understand that you, and everyone you think you're defending and everyone I'm defending and everyone in the United States who HAS insurance and is either on the verge of being "priced out of it" or just watching it eat up more and more of their money, federal and state governments included, ARE ALREADY PAYING MORE NOW FOR THE "MOOCHERS" YOU FOLKS REFER TO THAN YOU WILL BE OVER THE NEXT 20 YEARS WHEN, NOT IF, THIS BILL PASSES, then I give you more credit by responding to you than you deserve.


"Government run healthcare has been the moniker for the bill in Washington" -------

Correction, "Government Run Healthcare" has been the moniker for the bill ON THE RIGHT WING AND AMONG ELECTED REPUBLICANS ONLY! Why? Because the phrase tested negatively in some Frank Luntz focus group somewhere. "Death Panels" tested even worse, so IN IT WENT! Then someone whispered, "If we tell people they'll have to pay for illegal aliens, they'll hate it even more! IN IT GOES!!

Now it's "Let's say that passing addendums to the Senate bill through reconciliation is the Nuclear Option, it sounds so ominous, even though that was the name WE gave to ABOLISHING THE FILIBUSTER ENTIRELY just a few years ago, WHEN WE WANTED TO DO IT! Hey, remember when we hated the filibuster? Back before WE USED IT FOUR TIMES MORE OFTEN than any minority in Senate history!

Read: The Republican Noise Machine by David Brock
Your propaganda arm is really quite skilled. I can't deny that. The fact that it's all BULLSHIT, however, makes things here far too easy for me. I shake my head in disbelief at those who really absorb and repeat their crap. And you claim that I AM THE ONE parroting what someone else is saying?! Yeah, right.


"If you would like to get down to brass tacks, government-interference in the insurance industry is more appropriate." ------

I know, I know. Why don’t we big liberal meanies just leave those poor little insurance companies alone?! Here’s the problem. In 2009, health insurance profits rose by 56% while nearly 3 million Americans lost their coverage. If this was a coincidence it would be one thing. But these two phenomena are not mutually exclusive. They are quite closely tied. When your industry’s profit margins are based on how many sick, or previously sick, people you can screw over, there’s a little bit of an ethics problem in your business model.

Why is it that the right wing seems okay with the fact that we as individuals live under a Constitution which prevent us from harming or otherwise screwing over our fellow Americans and yet, at the same time, feel that once you put together enough individuals working toward the same purpose (See Socialism) to incorporate yourself, you should just be able to do whatever the hell you want with no legal responsibility?! Therefore regulation, which you see as so darned evil, does nothing more than hold businesses to the same moral responsibilities our founders preserved for the individual.

Can you provide examples where regulations go too far? Of course you can and I don’t pretend that it never happens. But, in health insurance, among other industries (credit cards for one), I can provide more examples of why regulations are needed. It’s because the entire industry’s profit motive turns any definition of business ethics upside down. Don’t conservatives believe in “old-fashioned values”? What, only in the bedroom? Not when it comes to business? Is a monopoly a “free market” now? Is telling a woman that she can’t partake of your vitally necessary product because her husband used to beat her, an expression of “moral values”? Do you see the point in paying health insurance premiums for years only to have the company drop you when you actually need their services? This is ethics in reverse and about as immoral as you can imagine.

During his Healthcare Reform Address to Congress last September, President Obama rightly observed that “Insurance executives don’t do these things because they’re bad people”. (In less than one hour, FOX News’s Sean Hannity turned this quote into, “I was shocked to hear the president call insurance executives “bad people”!) Nice one, Sean. They do it to turn a profit. That’s what businesses are supposed to do. However, when Americans are dying as a result of the pursuit of your bottom line, then life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness have been turned on their ear. This is exactly what government is for, to provide protection to Americans when no other force can do so. Can you tell me with a straight face that the insurance companies will fix all this if we just give them more power to do whatever the hell they want? Don’t bother trying; I’ll just crack up in your face anyway.

I guess it all comes back to your point of view. American conservatives see health insurance and health care in general as no more than another good or service from which as much profit as one can get away with should be derived. Whereas nearly the entire rest of the civilized world has recognized that, while profit is an important motive, the preservation of a “commodity” like your personal health should also be motivated by some level of human compassion. Maybe you’ll catch up with us liberals some day on the compassion thing? I’m not holding my breath though.

Paul Roth, Jr.