Travis Rowley: Democrats and the Perversion of Concepts
Saturday, April 13, 2013
“Next to me was a guy from the insurance company who then argued against the public health insurance option, saying that it wouldn’t let private insurance compete. The public insurance option would put the private insurance industry out of business and lead to single-payer. My single-payer friends, he was right! The man was right!...The goal of healthcare reform is not to protect the private health insurance industry…This is not a principled fight. This is a fight about strategy for getting [to single-payer], and I believe we will!” – Representative Jan Schakowsky (Democrat)
Now that Americans everywhere are finally being assaulted by the most unwieldy piece of legislation ever devised (Obamacare), we can once again plainly observe one of the nation’s most enduring political realities: Democrats have never gotten anything right.
But what other trend would we expect from people who allow emotion to steer their policy preferences, who make a lifestyle out of intimidating their opposition into silence, and who employ political correctness with unrelenting ferocity? How could such anti-intellectualism ever discover the truth?
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTLast week Bill Maher confessed to the Left’s political culture, and praised its effectiveness. Maher expressed his annoyance with anti-gay “marriage” conservatives who argue, “You know, calling me a bigot doesn’t help.” Maher responds, “No, actually it does. Actually, it helps a lot, because that’s how things change, is you make it socially unacceptable.”
Maher’s comment helped to demonstrate precisely how the Obamacare debacle could have been avoided if only Democrats weren’t so astute in dictating political dialogue and manipulating the simplest of subjects.
For instance, in large measure, progressives successfully advanced the issue of same-sex “marriage” simply by making as many people as possible forget that marriage existed well before the US Government, and that marriage has a longstanding purpose and definition. People, instead, were to focus on heart-tugging misnomers such as “people should be able to marry who they love.” Liberal activists understand that, if the original premise of matrimony is acknowledged, then the notion of gay “marriage” – along with all the talk about “discrimination” and “civil rights” – is much more likely to be considered an altogether silly idea.
Similarly, in the case of government-centric healthcare, progressives have caused millions of people to forget what health insurance truly is – its original purpose and its market origins.
Market Origins
When speaking to people who spend most of their time within the left-wing media haze, I often find it shockingly helpful to simply point out the obvious: That is, that sick people existed before insurance companies. It follows that, at some point, a few people took notice of the fact that the large majority of their neighbors were relatively healthy. These entrepreneurs would enter the marketplace, point to the one terribly ill man in the crowd, and say, “If you ever end up like that, I will pay for your long-term medical treatments.”
An industry untouched by government agents had companies vying for as many customers as possible, creating products and conditions in which just about everyone could afford a catastrophic health insurance premium.
Incomes and savings were protected, profits were gained, and jobs were created – all while lives were being saved.
Progressives like to speak of people “dying in the streets” due to a lack of health insurance. But even if that’s true, weren’t these people dying in the streets before the existence of health insurance? The only difference now is that health insurance companies (read: evil corporations) are morally and legally bound to save some of these people.
Progressives would have everyone believe that insurance companies simply showed up one day, and began to arbitrarily choose who would live and who would die.
Here Comes the Left
Tormented by the sight of a profitable business venture, and with a perverted sense of “fairness,” progressives began to assault insurance companies with onerous regulations, to limit market competition, and to force insurance companies to insure sick individuals – effectively socializing an industry that was specifically designed to exclude people with unavoidably costly “pre-existing conditions.”
Only to be sneered and laughed at by a handful of liberals, I once had the opportunity to explain on an episode of A Lively Experiment that “insurance companies don’t exist for sick people…Making insurance companies cover sick people makes as much sense as making Toys-R-Us pay for sick people.”
Why do liberals want to force health insurance companies, specifically, to cover the cost of unhealthy individuals? Because they are profitable? Simply because they have the money to do so?
Moreover, despite decades of incremental government control, decrees, and interference – which has naturally led to rising costs and an increase in the number of uninsured – progressives have somehow retained the nerve to refer to the situation as “private insurance.” We’re told, “The free market has failed!”
Yeah, right. Okay, liberals.
Quick question: Of all the people “dying in the streets,” how many have actually been placed there by progressive policies?
Ho, Ho! Hey, Hey! Liberals, how many formerly-healthy people have you killed to-day?!
For the political Left, millions of uninsured Americans, along with gut-wrenching images of children with pre-existing conditions, has been enough to demonize health insurance companies and garner a political push that calls for even more government control – Obamacare.
And soon to follow, full-blown socialized medicine. A single-payer program. Nationalized healthcare.
Reestablishing the free-market insurance industry would serve to pinpoint the amount of people truly in need by making health insurance as affordable as possible. Leaving more money in the pockets of policy holders to share with churches and charities would enable these philanthropic groups – and perhaps even local governments – to more easily care for the small number of the truly unfortunate.
For progressives, however, it makes much more sense to pervert the original purpose of health insurance, abolish a multi-billion dollar industry, and destroy something that the vast majority of people have historically benefitted from.
Travis Rowley (TravisRowley.com) is the author of The RI Republican: An Indictment of the Rhode Island Left.
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