Here's to Your Health II

"We believe there are several issues out there that leave the existence of the Republic at risk, not the least of which is Obamacare."

--John Stahl, Chairman of the Berks County Tea Party

("Senator Goes Face to Face with Dissent")

We got quite a few reactions to yesterday's post on the uproar over proposed health care reform. We weren't planning to revisit the topic today, but then we saw the above quote. We were so taken aback that we just had to say something.

Look, as convinced as we are of the essential rightness of all our positions, we think it's always advisable to at least try to see where the other side is coming from. We believe that's called "empathetitude" (we could be wrong about that--it's a state of mind we don't often adopt. So we're trying--we're really really trying--to parse the state of mind of these protesters who seem to think that passing legislation to ensure basic healthcare for the vast majority of the population is literally an existential threat to the United States of America. Let's see. . . .

We think the logic runs something like this: The idea of "universal healthcare" is equated to the idea of "socialized medicine." Now, in its most benign form, "socialized medicine" brings to mind images of the UK and Canada, which, while they may not be the toughest kids on the block, are hardly hell on earth. In fact, they have some things going for them. England has given us some pretty good music, and Canada has . . . uh, well. . . Canada's cute, too. So we can't see the problem there.

Well, OK, maybe people get turned off by the phrase "socialized," which makes them think of socialism. Now, here again, the main problem is that the word "socialism" has gotten a bad rap. Political scientist Robert Axelrod in a book about cooperation, effectively defined socialism (or at least a socialist state of mind) as "niceness." So what's the problem with "niceness"? Well, nothing, but many people equate "socialism" with "communism"--which are not the same thing--and "communism" with Russia and in particular with "Stalinism." The thing people don't realize is that calling Josef Stalin a socialist is like calling calling Tony "Scarface" Montana a pharmacist. Yes, socialism calls for state control of large sectors of the economy, but there's a huuuuuuuge leap from there to labor camps and mass starvation. So maybe people just need to be taken by the hand and told that socialism isn't so bad.

Oh, and, by the way, OBAMA ISN'T EVEN TALKING ABOUT SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, YOU IGNORANT SCHMUCKS!!!!!!

Sorry. Sorry. That was uncalled for. Things got away from us for a moment.

Ahem.

From what we understand, President Obama is essentially calling for legislation that would require people to have medical insurance, that would allow government to compete with the private sector in the provision of insurance, that would subsidize poor people who cannot afford insurance, and that would raise taxes on the wealthy to cover a large portion of the costs. Hardly sounds like a slippery slope to North Korea.

Now, the Solipsist is not so naive as to think that only the rich will end up paying for this. We are fairly certain that somewhere down the line our own middle-class taxes might go up. We might, for example, have to pay taxes on our employer-provided insurance. And while this would be unpleasant, it also might--might--provide some opportunities. After all, as we said yesterday, one of the biggest problems with the current health care regime is that users are generally oblivious to the true costs. If we felt more of the "pain" of paying for healthcare, we ourselves would demand vastly greater efficiencies in the healthcare system, which would, in turn, lead to reduced costs. It's a thought, anyway.

So getting back to our original point--trying to be empatheticalistic to our ideological opposites, we think that all this rage is simply a result of misunderstandings. All someone needs to do is calmly explain to these poor benighted souls the errors in their logic.

That is, if you can get the morons to stop screaming for five minutes.