It is instructive to note that while benefit mandates make policies more comprehensive, they also drive up the price of basic coverage by as much as 20%, making it less affordable. Ironically the left has rejected the repeal of benefit mandates as well as guaranteed issue laws, community rating laws, tort reform and elimination of impediments to interstate competition – all of which have been proposed by conservatives and all of which would significantly reduce the price of insurance making it more affordable and more accessible.
The political left rejects these solutions for the same reason my FB friends reduce economic and moral issues to the banal: this debate isn’t really about medical care; sure there is lots of medical care terminology, but at bottom this discussion is about the political and philosophical validity of the administrative state.
The new left asserts the noble claim that healthcare is a right. A right by definition requires nothing of anyone else except that they do nothing to infringe upon that right. To claim healthcare as a right requires more than that others step out of the way; it requires that others provide it. The rather sticky moral question of how one secures the right of one man to healthcare by violating the right to private property of another is never addressed. Instead those that question the shaky philosophical underpinnings are called evil, heartless Neanderthals that would withhold Chemotherapy from dying children. (Again the fact that our alternative might actually provide more sick children with Chemotherapy thus saving more lives is irrelevant. Intentions count more than results.)
Ohh to be a member of the new left; virtue is only one platitude away.
If healthcare is a right then certainly so must be housing, food and clothing. In order to meet all these newfound rights Government must expand and so must its power. This is the new world order the left seeks.
But where will it end? If every need a citizen has, every tragic circumstance he may face – every “should not” is to be addressed by a positive government obligation we will soon find ourselves awash in government without end. We will find ourselves slaves - contented slaves but slaves nonetheless- going to the polls, still believing we are practicing something called democracy. The good news is we will be feeling pretty good about ourselves.