Free to Die
NY Times , September 15, 2011
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Back in 1980, just as America was making
its political turn to the right, Milton Friedman lent his voice to the change
with the famous TV series “Free to Choose.” In episode after episode, the
genial economist identified laissez-faire economics with personal
choice and empowerment, an upbeat vision that would be echoed
and amplified by Ronald Reagan.
But that was then. Today, “free to choose”
has become “free to die.”
I’m referring, as you might guess, to what
happened during Monday’s G.O.P. presidential debate. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked
Representative Ron Paul what we should do if a 30-year-old man who chose not
to purchase health insurance suddenly found himself in need of six months of
intensive care. Mr. Paul replied, “That’s what freedom is all about
— taking your own risks.” Mr. Blitzer pressed him again, asking whether
“society should just let him die.”
And the
crowd erupted with cheers and shouts of “Yeah!”
The incident highlighted something that I
don’t think most political commentators have fully absorbed: at
this point, American politics is fundamentally about different moral visions.
Now, there are two things you should know
about the Blitzer-Paul exchange. The first is that after the crowd weighed in,
Mr. Paul basically tried to evade the question, asserting that warm-hearted
doctors and charitable individuals would always make sure that people received
the care they needed — or at least they would if they hadn’t been corrupted by
the welfare state. Sorry, but that’s a fantasy. People who can’t afford
essential medical care often fail to get it, and always have — and sometimes
they die as a result.
The second is that very few of those who
die from lack of medical care look like Mr. Blitzer’s hypothetical individual
who could and should have bought insurance. In reality, most uninsured
Americans either have low incomes and cannot afford insurance, or are rejected
by insurers because they have chronic conditions.
So would people on the right be willing to
let those who are uninsured through no fault of their own die from lack of
care? The answer, based on recent history, is a resounding “Yeah!”
Think, in particular, of the children.
The day after the debate, the Census Bureau
released its latest estimates on income, poverty and health insurance. The
overall picture was terrible: the weak economy continues to wreak havoc on
American lives. One relatively bright spot, however, was health care for
children: the percentage of children without health coverage was lower in 2010
than before the recession, largely thanks to the 2009 expansion of the State
Children’s Health Insurance Program, or S-chip.
And the reason S-chip was expanded in 2009
but not earlier was, of course, that former President George W. Bush blocked
earlier attempts to cover more children — to the cheers of many on the right.
Did I mention that one in six children in Texas lacks health insurance, the
second-highest rate in the nation?
So the freedom to die extends, in practice,
to children and the unlucky as well as the improvident. And the right’s embrace
of that notion signals an
important shift in the nature of American politics.
In the past,
conservatives accepted the need for
a government-provided safety net on humanitarian grounds. Don’t take it from me, take it from
Friedrich Hayek, the conservative intellectual hero, who specifically declared
in “The Road to Serfdom” his support for “a comprehensive system of social
insurance” to protect citizens against “the
common hazards of life,” and singled out health in particular.
Given the agreed-upon desirability of
protecting citizens against the worst, the question then became one of costs
and benefits — and health care was one of those areas where even conservatives
used to be willing to accept government intervention in the name of compassion, given the clear evidence that
covering the uninsured would not, in fact, cost very much money. As many
observers have pointed out, the Obama health care plan was largely based on
past Republican plans, and is virtually identical to Mitt Romney’s health
reform in Massachusetts.
Now,
however, compassion is out of fashion
— indeed, lack of compassion has become a matter of principle, at least among
the G.O.P.’s base.
And what this means is that modern conservatism is actually a deeply
radical movement, one that is hostile to the kind of society we’ve had for
the past three generations — that is, a society that, acting through the
government, tries to mitigate some of the “common hazards of life” through such
programs as Social Security, unemployment insurance, Medicare and Medicaid.
Are voters ready to embrace such a radical
rejection of the kind of America we’ve all grown up in? I guess we’ll find out
next year.
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DO
What
I like about Representative Ron Paul is the consistency and that he is forthcoming
about his belief. 和而不同 (I am not sure yet about his 和ness)
I
agree with the author that most commentators haven’t fully absorbed, but Rachel
Maddow picked it up, though not emphatic enough.
How
can I bridge the gap between the modern conservatism and Christianity many
conservatives claim to believe in? For one, compassion is out of fashion; for
the other, He sacrifice His life for us.
