Rachel Held Evans had a post, The Christian Response to Health Care Reform, in which I got a little heated. She closed the thread, so I’ll be ranting on my own blog on the issue of conservative judgmentalism.
You know, one of my problems is that I often react against an amorphous blob in my mind rather than to specific statements. In the process, I can sound like a raving lunatic. So allow me here to cite specific statements.
1. On Facebook, a conservative friend of mine posted an article by David Hogberg, entitled, “20 Ways ObamaCare Will Take Away Our Freedoms.” The article had some of these gems:
You are young and healthy and want to pay for insurance that reflects that status? Tough. You’ll have to pay for premiums that cover not only you, but also the guy who smokes three packs a day, drink a gallon of whiskey and eats chicken fat off the floor. That’s because insurance companies will no longer be able to underwrite on the basis of a person’s health status. (Section 2701).
You are an employer and you would like to offer coverage that doesn’t allow your employers’ slacker children to stay on the policy until age 26? Tough. (Section 2714).
2. On Rachel’s blog, Anon1 wrote: The issue you raise is an important one. Public hospitals have to service the uninsured because they receive public money (we are taxed so the poor can receive free care). Should some uninsured be turned away? Some yes and some no. Some should not be turned away and some should be because some have chosen to spend money on unnecessary things such as cable television or Taco Bell or a cell phone instead of setting money aside for a visit to the doctor. If a person has squandered the money they have had or refused to get a job should we as a nation feel compelled to service them? If so, to what degree? Are there any lines which we as a society should draw? If so where and why?
Some of us have high deductible insurance – $5,000 or more. Such a deductible brings the insurance cost down, forces us to save, and keeps us personally responsible for ourselves and for our needs. I think our government as well as some individuals have the tendency take the element of personal responsibility away from many people in our society. Let us take care of you is a message many have heard almost all of their lives. That is not compassion it is evil.
It’s not that conservatives don’t make some good points—about the deficit, the government’s coldness, the importance of competition, the need for tort reform, the fact that government health care can lead to a degree of rationing, since the government has finite resources, etc. I just feel that there are conservatives who have a “you made your bed, now sleep in it” attitude, even if that bed is illness and death. And there are conservatives who judge the poor and the sick. They act as if they deserve their problems. You don’t know how many times I hear “If you don’t work, you don’t eat” (II Thessalonians 3:10) from conservatives whenever someone suggests that the government should help somebody out—with health care, with housing, with food. But there are people who work their tails off, and they’re still poor! They’re called the “working poor.” And the cost of health care is heavy on the middle class as well.