"Health Care As a Privilege: What the GOP Won’t Admit" By Jonathan Chait

[applegrove]

Health Care As a Privilege: What the GOP Won’t Admit

By Jonathan Chait at NY Magazine

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/06/health-care-as-privilege-what-gop-wont-admit.html?imw=Y

"SNIP......................................................


Several reporters have recently filed dispatches showing in human terms what sort of conditions we would be perpetuating in the event that five Republican Supreme Court Justices, or a potential Republican-run government next year, partially or completely nullify the Affordable Care Act. A man will watch the tumor in his leg grow to the size of a melon, and his wife will sew special pants to fit the growing bulge, because he has no insurance. A woman will hobble around for four years on an untreated broken ankle she can’t have repaired. People will line up in their cars and spend the night in a parking lot queuing for a rare free health clinic.


Maybe these stories sound like cheap emotional manipulation. They are actually a clarifying tool to cut through the rhetorical fog surrounding the health-care debate and define the question in the most precise terms.


Opponents of the law have endlessly invoked “socialism.” Nothing in the Affordable Care Act or any part of President Obama’s challenges the basic dynamics of market capitalism. All sides accept that some of us should continue to enjoy vastly greater comforts and pleasures than others. If you don’t work as hard as Mitt Romney has, or were born less smart, or to worse parents, or enjoyed worse schools, or invested your skills in an industry that collapsed, or suffered any other misfortune, then you will be punished for this. Your television may be low-definition, or you might not be able to heat or cool your home as comfortably as you would like; you may clothe your children in discarded garments from the Salvation Army.


This is not in dispute. What is being disputed is whether the punishments to the losers in the market system should include, in addition to these other things, a denial of access to non-emergency medical treatment. The Republican position is that it should. They may not want a woman to have to suffer an untreated broken ankle for lack of affordable treatment. Likewise, I don’t want people to be denied nice televisions or other luxuries. I just don’t think high-definition television or nice clothing are goods that society owes to one and all. That is how Republicans think about health care.


...........................................................SNIP"

[bighughdiehl]

1. But don't worry...

if you're a first-trimester fetus,
the GOP cares sooooo much.

[CTyankee]

2. and when the child is born, they don't care if the woman has to deliver

in a ditch as long as she's been kept pregnant until birth. Once she goes into labor, they want nothing to do with her or her baby. No free nuthin' from then on out...

[Proud Liberal Dem]

4. Not true

there's military service (for their wars) to consider................

[CTyankee]

5. and in the meantime cut the woman and the child's food stamps and health care?

great. malnourished and sick troops to be...makes sense...

[Proud Liberal Dem]

6. Well true

but that can be part of making most people without brighter prospects eager to volunteer.

[grilled onions]

3. You Must Have The Common Sense To Be Wealthy Or Born That Way

The rest get punishment they well deserve. From bad teeth,bad health,pre existing conditions,unemployment, homelessness--it's all your fault. You are dragging the economy down with your "costly" problems. How can the 1% continue to rack up their profits as long as you have needs that are supposed to be addressed? They are doing their best to twist the facts, cheat those who need help the most and come out on top like the curdled cream they are. If they could they would treat us like any loss in a business by purging us to another place,another country.They simply don't have the time nor the patience to help the needy(never mind having the conscience to care for them).We are a thorn in their side, a drag on their profit margin.
While they talk a good game about other countries and how great and fair this country is they do just the opposite. Their platform seems to be little more then hate,greed and the only game in town is to see what billionaire can outspend the other.