TAKE A WALK

I like Jerry Pournelle. He asks some excellent questions. He created whole universes of the mind.

The big complaint about repealing Obamacare is that it will leave some millions without health insurance. Of course they don’t have health insurance in the first place, because much of Obamacare is not insurance, it’s “universal” health care paid for by a complex system of subsidies; and of course the nation got along for a number of years without it. 

My question is, why must I – actually my grandchildren – pay for your healthcare to begin with? I say my grandchildren, because most of Obamacare’s subsidies are paid for with borrowed money, but I do pay current taxes – we all do although only half of us pay income taxes – and the United States is living off borrowed money at a higher rate than usual. But Obamacare says that if you get sick, your health care is my responsibility, not yours; and I am wondering how I came by this responsibility? 

Was I born with it? No. I’m pretty sure that when I was growing up my folks paid my doctor bills to Doctor Demarco and St. Joseph’s Hospital, and no one else did. Doctor Demarco lived across the street from St. Peter’s Orphanage, and donated some of his time there, and to impoverished patients at St. Joseph’s, and I suppose that if my Dad had ever got fired from WHBQ and I got appendicitis I’d be taken care of somehow, but my father was never under the illusion that the final responsibility was his – well, ours – and no one else’s. 

But somehow over the years I have acquired the responsibility to pay your health debts, and those of refugees, and even of illegal migrants who have no intention of assimilating, and I would like to know how I got this obligation, and the state got the right to enforce it with armed men? 

Please do not remind me of my moral and religious obligations. The state is still tolerant – sometimes – of religious views, but it has made it clear that it is unconstitutional to impose religious obligations on anyone. That issue is closed. The state doesn’t send armed men to enforce religious edicts. No: religious obligations, and particularly Christian obligations, are right out, not to be enforced. 

Yet I am obliged to give you – you are entitled – not only to emergency health care, but to health insurance, no matter how sick you are, or how strange your needs. I am even required to pay part of the cost of your sex change operation, should you want one and find a qualified someone to say you need it for proper mental health. It is not an obligation I asked for or assented to, but it is an entitlement you have; and I want to know the constitutional basis for this. Surely your sex change operation is not necessarily and proper for the health of the republic? It is not interstate commerce within any sane interpretation of the phrase. It is not promoting the general welfare. 

You want it. I don’t say you can’t have it, but surely I can say that I don’t want to pay for it? And I don’t have to be totally bereft of the milk of human kindness to say I don’t owe you any health care insurance either.

I vacationed with a girl who believed deep in her heart and soul that I must pay for her insurance. I owed it to her for her maternity care, mental care and everything else. She worked for it and her employer paid the lion's share for her 'health' care and I must too. I pointed out that where she and hers went wrong was ordering me at gunpoint to pay for her healthcare. She quite literally didn't get it. She thought I was some sort of slave who owed it to her to be Barkus and thus forthcoming with all the money she and her's believed I owe because.

One doesn't 'argue' with that mindset. As whip smart as the comrades are, they bought into that universe and Cuba, Venezuela, Puerto Rico and Illinois won't convince them. There's a pony in there somewhere and it's theirs and they mean to have it.