Spent the weekend camping up at Knoebel’s with seven other families, all with elementary-age (and younger) kids, a nice break from the intensive politics/online realm that consumes so much time and thought.
Still, politics intruded. One of the dads was a real conservative, and around the campfire the final night we got into it - mildly - over the issue of health care reform. And his perspective was one I hadn’t heard articulated by the right, but one I think is widespread:
Why do I have to be responsible for everyone else?
“How about if I take responsibility for one person, or one family,” he asked rhetorically. “Why do I have to be responsible for everyone? Why is it my obligation to make sure everyone has health insurance?”
In other words, he’s worked hard and sacrificed to have what he has, and he resents the notion that he should be required to give up any of that to fix a system that works fine for him - and in his mind, penalizes only those who haven’t worked as hard as he has, who haven’t sacrificed.
It was an interesting point, but as I told him, it assumes that the health-care have-nots are a bunch of layabouts. Slackers who are just looking to milk the system. Maybe there are plenty of these people - but what of those who have been laid off and lost their health insurance? What of would-be entrepreneurs, those who would like to start their own business - something that should be encouraged -but who can’t break away from their employer because they can’t afford the health care premiums for themselves, let alone any employees they might hire?
Moreover, while this conservative worldview focuses on the individual - me, my family - the drive to reform health care is about the broader society. Collectivism, conservatives will charge; but what is society’s responsibility to its most vulnerable members?
Do Americans have an obligation toward other Americans, and America itself? Or should it be every man for himself, should those who stumble along the side of the road and aren’t picked up by friends or family or church be left to perish? Is that a just society? Or do we not care whether America is a just society or not?
From a societal standpoint, health care reform is a no-brainer. The manner in which health care is delivered to the have-nots now - little to no primary/preventative care and, as a result, unhealthier lifestyles; emergency room visits for ailments big and small - is inefficient and costly. The costs to society - the costs to you - can be brought down. And that is the key element here; once reformed, health care may cost this society less. And if you believe, as I do, that the most prosperous nation on earth does indeed have a moral obligation to the least among us, then the system will be more equitable.
Beyond this, it will be an economic driver. In our deindustrializing nation, expanding access to health care will create jobs and investment, encourage technological development - all of this, while making the general population healthier.
From 10,000 feet, health care reform is therefore necessary, the next step in our development and progress as a society. But from two feet - the conservative viewpoint - it threatens what I have; it awards my tax dollars and worse, empathy, to the undeserving; and this drive to improve society is happening even though conservatives, as members of that society, disapprove; this is the source of their claim that they are “not being listened to.”
Conservatism, or at least this type of conservatism, is based on the notion that what is best for the individual is necessarily best for society. That is not always the case; and that view can be called selfish. Ask what you can do for your country, Kennedy intoned; do conservatives ask this now? Or is the question only relevant when we are talking about war or “moral decline?”
