How About Repealing Rand Paul?
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On Greta Van Susteren’s Fox News show on 6 January, Rand Paul was asked, if the Affordable Care Act were actually repealed “What would happen to the American people?”
This was Paul’s answer: “We could try freedom for a while. We had it for a long time. That’s where you sell something and I agree to buy it because I like it. That’s how we operated in most of the rest of the marketplace other than health care. Now the president has said you can only buy certain types of health care that I approve of and anything I don’t approve of, you’re not allowed to purchase. We could try freedom. I think it might work. It works everywhere else.”
Ah, yes, that freedom. The freedom to be denied treatment, to have your policy canceled for spurious reasons. The freedom to have something you may have been born with, even, perhaps, your gender, declared a “pre-existing condition”. The freedom to die because you cannot afford treatment for what’s killing you. The freedom to lose the first of the “creator-endowed” rights mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. Well, there are at least two important things that Paul has failed to realize.
One is a statement he made in a speech given at the at Harvard’s Institute of Politics on 28 April 2014: “I think it’s going to be difficult to turn the clock back. People get assumed and accustomed to receiving things, particularly things that they get for free. I think one of the practical things you might be able to do, and I think the public at large might accept this, is to make Obamacare voluntary. You make it voluntary, basically you get rid of the coercion.”
In other words, Paul conceded the probability that there is already a high hurdle to get a repeal of the ACA passed, and as time goes on, that bar keeps moving higher and higher. By comparison, repealing (or even privatizing) social security is a 30-foot pole vault (the current record is 20′ 2½”). Like so many other Republitarians, Paul contradicts his own words from one speech to the next. Also, like so many other Liberpublicans, he forgets that the media, particularly the internet, does not go away (remember Romney’s “42% speech?).
The other is Paul fails to realize is that there is a kind of tyranny to choice – sometimes too much choice is more crippling to one’s freedom than fewer. When insurance companies have the freedom to issue me a policy without telling me all the ways they can deny coverage (or burying it in fine print), it means that the time we spend trying to find an insurer that will cover us the way we want to be covered is time that we are not free to live our lives. When they deny us treatment after we get sick, we lose the freedom to live as a reasonably healthy, productive citizens.
When Paul mentioned “freedom” to Van Susteren, he wasn’t talking about my freedom and your freedom to live in good health, he was talking about the insurance industry’s freedom to cheat, deceive and outright lie to their customers.
Van Susteren then posed this: “But wouldn’t we go back to a situation where some people simply couldn’t afford health care with that because right now we have the healthier, more affluent people subsidizing the less healthy and less affluent?. Then they would end up back at the hospitals and the hospitals would be providing free care again and now we’ve got the financial burden back on the hospitals. So we’re back to square one.”
To which Paul replied, “The interesting thing is they still do that because even under Obamacare, there’s some people who get subsidized insurance, but the subsidized insurance has a $6000 deductible and so what do you think those people do with that $6000 deductible? They probably still are a non-payer.”
Being good little Ayn Randians like all hardcore Libertarians, both Van Susteren and Paul are raising the specter of “makers” and “takers”. They are calling everyone who receives the ACA subsidies moochers. They are also telling people who can’t afford a pre-ACA type of insurance that they should just accept preventable sickness and death. Finally, they are forgetting the fundamental purpose of insurance: not to benefit a privileged few, but to distribute the financial risk among as many people as possible to benefit all (anathema for Libertarians). This is why, when it comes to something as basic as insuring health, there is something perverse about doing it for profit. Letting someone die for the bottom line is reprehensible and immoral, yet this has been common practice for decades. At least the government is not concerned with supporting shareholders’ dividends and CEO bonuses; absent the profit motive, the only concern is serving the customer, and that is why, if we can’t have fully socialized medical care, we have to place strict controls on what the insurers are allowed to get away with.
As for Van Susteren, Paul and the people who agree with them, words fail me. Immoral, arrogant, smug and disgusting aren’t nearly strong enough. Sociopathic comes about as close as I can without using profanity. I have a favorite solution for dealing with these people, but not only is it in bad taste, it also violates all the known laws of physics.
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I agree, the hurdle to get it repealed is continually growing. But I don’t think the Republicans want to repeal it anymore than the democrats. Both want more control over every aspect of our lives and more of our money. The ACA is providing a reason for more intrusion into our private lives, more infringement of our freedom and fueling the “need” to take more money from those of us who work to pay for those who don’t. By the way the ACA does not provide for health care at all. It does not make health care more available to anyone. In fact more hospitals have closed and fewer doctors are available for general medicine thanks to this monstrosity. When you get off the kool-aid and actually do some research you will find that the majority of the cost of medicine is now insurance. How about you pay your doctor and then you goto your insurance company. Worked for years very well but since the patients got lazy and have the doctors/hospitals do the paperwork the cost has gone through the roof. Check out the clinics and doctors that don’t take insurance, the cost is a fraction of what a hospital charges for the very same procedures.
Exactly how is providing low cost health insurance to millions of uninsured an intrusion into our private lives? I’m confused about that.
You want intrusion? I could go on for hours about how private sector insurance intruded on my life – almost got me in prison – but I don’t have time for it now. Maybe that should be the subject of another post.
That would be an excellent subject!!
It will be my next post, but it’ll have to wait for a day or so. I’m having a small dinner party tonight, and that, for me, means spending the day in the kitchen (in order to do everything right), but I’ll spend the weekend on it.
I can do the short or long version. Which would you prefer?
Short is probably better. In my experience articles over 1K words aren’t read. Thanks.
Enjoy your weekend E.A.
I would have loved to have seen this interview. I hate Rand Paul, and I hate more than his daddy. He is smarmy and I can’t stand smarmy or anyone that is smarmy.
try going to http://crooksandliars.com/2015/01/rand-paul-promises-aca-repeal-votes.
I have long considered that both Pauls – father Ron and son Rand (whom I sometimes refer to as Ron-Paul II) are their own evil twins. Either of them can make extremely sensible points, then follow it up with something that is to batshit crazy that you wonder if the substitution was made when you blinked. THe big problem is that a lot of people remember the sensible stuff and skip over the batshit.
I’m not sure about that E.A. There are a lot of batshit people who have no understanding at all of “sensible” and just remember the “batshit crazy.” 🙂
I guess it’s all a matter of what side you’re on. The sensible people remember the sensible stuff and (as sensible people do) dismiss the batshit, and the crazy people ignore the sensible and embrace the guano.
I’ve no doubt that many Republicans believe this garbage, but not all. I even think Rand Paul knows it’s the best thing for the people, but won’t admit it. He’s lose his base.
I agree on most points, however I fear a sinister element at work. Seems the ACA will be more expensive than advertised (most govt projects are) and this will continue to drive up the national debt. The Federal Reserve is a PRIVATE EVIL bank, it’s unconstituional, a sham, and profits off creating debt. They charge us to print our own money.
The Fed says “you had a deficet this year, no worries I’ll print more money, but it’s not free….
Until we wake up to this evil, we can not prosper as a nation and as a people. We are divided on purpose to not see this.
I don’t see that Bill. The millions of people who were unable to get insurance prior to the ACA were the ones costing us billions and billions. I’m unable to find a credible source that supports any increase in premiums. Do you have a link? I would be interested in reading it. Thanks man.
The author writes:
“As for Van Susteren, Paul and the people who agree with them, words fail me. Immoral, arrogant, smug and disgusting aren’t nearly strong enough. Sociopathic comes about as close as I can without using profanity. I have a favorite solution for dealing with these people, but not only is it in bad taste, it also violates all the known laws of physics.”
Well said, and well put. Brilliant actually, as was the entire article. Thanks for capturing the spirit of hatred that poisons the once Grand Ole Party.
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