A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Public plan as second-best option

Christian social ethicist Gary Dorrien argues that a publc health plan–at least one with teeth–could be an acceptable second-best option, in lieu of a single-payer plan, which he favors.

I still don’t have firm views on specifically what kind of heath system reform is needed, but I am convinced that, as Dorrien puts it, “[h]ealth care is a fundamental human right that should be available to all people regardless of their economic resources.” At least assuming that the society can afford it, which would obviously not be true at all times and in all places.

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2 responses to “Public plan as second-best option”

  1. Gaius Sempronius Gracchus

    An important point in favor of single payor is that it makes it impossible for the rich and powerful to give themselves really great coverage while sticking the poor with cough syrup for cancer.

    Anything that shoves the masses onto rock-bottom plans, public option or not, allows the rich to do to the medical minimum what they have always done to the minimum wage.

    As their screaming about taxes and trillions makes clear even to people who somehow didn’t get it up to now, it’s all about the money.

    Providing universal coverage at a decent standard costs a lot of money for any country that does it, and it is impossible to lay hands on that much money, anywhere, without soaking the well off pretty thoroughly.

    But the richer they are the more their absurd luxuries and extravagance matter to them than the very lives of the poor, even of their own towns, states, and country.

    What does it mean that since the 18th Century Christianity has been overwhelmingly devoted to reaction and counter-revolution?

    That since the 19th Century the politics of the left, from the liberals and progressives on over to the anarchists and communists, has been driven by atheist, or at least wholly secular, ideologies, philosophies, and outlooks?

    That, as the democrats of the left have so long so rightly lamented, the right supported by the Christians has been over all that time so stubborn as to willingly drive the lower orders, in furious hatred of the bourgeoisie, into the arms of scoundrels and madmen?

    That the poor and the working classes were left to be led by mass movements and ideologies according to which class conscious politics meant an outlook suffused with hatred and the will to slaughter justified by an absurd promise of utopia, all of them as close to complete political idiocy as the fascist exaltations of violence and The Leader?

    At least since Luther told the princes of Germany to slaughter the peasants, Christianity has been on the wrong side of every revolt of the masses.

    Christianity has abandoned them to the leadership of political blockheads, mass murderers, and tyrants.

    How is that possible?

    Hmm.

    Got a little off topic, there.

    Maybe.

    Reply
  2. Gaius Sempronius Gracchus

    Sorry.

    That should be something like

    “But the richer they are the more their absurd luxuries and extravagance matter more to them than the very lives of the poor, even of their own towns, states, and country.”

    Reply

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