Times Frets: Health Care Not a Right?

RUSH: The New York Times -- let me get to this later, too. But I just want to tease you with it. They have a column here by Thomas B. Edsall. Now, that name might ring a bell. Thomas B. Edsall used to write at the Washington Post. Be "Warshington," for those of you in Rio Linda. And after leaving the Washington Post and now writing opinion pieces now and then for the New York Times, he has been involved in, I think, the Obama campaign somehow. Not a direct paid participant, but there's been a linkage there.

Anyway, he's the guy in November of 2011 who had a column in the New York Times explaining how the Obama campaign was going to expressly ignore white working class family voters. They were in the process of losing them anyway, so they were just gonna write them off and make up the difference by going after minorities, such as intensifying the effort on Hispanics, African-Americans, women, lesbian, gay, transgenders and so forth. And what was noteworthy about it was here you had an incumbent president and somebody close to his campaign writing a piece acknowledging that the votes of white working-class people were of no interest to them anymore.

That alone, and that's what it said, that was the point of the column. I was stunned. Not because of anything racial. Don't misunderstand. Because that's a large group of people. White working class, read blue-collar, however you define, traditional Democrat voters. White working-class families, these were the people, many of them had participated in the creation the Tea Party, they were ticked off at Obamacare and all of the debt and everything, and they were just being written off. And there were a lot of them.

Now, if you wanted to add the racial component to it, you could, and you can get even more interesting, but that was not my initial take. It was just a large number of people to just cast aside. And it was a tantamount admission, by the same token, that they'd lost them anyway. Many of those people had voted for Obama in 2008.

So, anyway, that's who Thomas B. Edsall is. He had an op-ed in the New York Times yesterday, might have been posted last night, I'm not sure, but the headline is: "Has ObamaCare Turned Us Off Sharing Wealth?" Now, this is unbelievable, to see this in the New York Times. It's a long piece, 750, maybe a thousand words. The whole premise is, Edsall is voicing concern felt by many on the left that the larger liberal agenda of the redistribution of wealth, the redistribution of income is in trouble because Obamacare is not working and in fact may be turning voters against the concept.

In other words, Obamacare is such a disaster, people on the left are worried that it is so prominent a failure and it's so obviously a socialist plan and that it is failing so dramatically, it might turn the socialist or left-wing agenda, turn people against it.

"With the advent of the Affordable Care Act, the share of Americans convinced that health care is a right shrank from a majority to a minority. This shift in public opinion is a major victory for the Republican Party. It is part of a larger trend: a steady decline in support for redistributive government policies. Emmanuel Saez, an economics professor at Berkeley and one of the nation’s premier experts on inequality --" how in the world do you -- are you kidding me? You have to be a college professor to be an expert on inequality?

Mr. Snerdley, how much money do you have in your pocket right now? Okay, I've got $500 in my pocket. I know that what you and I have is unequal, and I didn't go to college. What is this, a professor at Berkeley who is an expert at inequality? That's not what he's an expert on. He's an expert socialist. He's an expert at hacking away at the well-to-do. That's what this means. An expert on inequality is somebody who is expert and adept at defining policies to take money away from people who have it.

Anyway, they're worried, and we'll get into this in greater detail as the program unfolds when I finish this Hillary stuff, which frankly bores me. But we gotta do it. This is low-hanging fruit, this Hillary stuff, I cannot ignore this.

But health care as a right, you know who started that line of thinking, a guy named Harris Wofford, who was a senator from Pennsylvania. Back in the, I forget, eighties and during one of his reelection campaigns he ran around saying (paraphrasing), "If the Constitution provides you a lawyer because you are too destitute or too poor to afford one, well, then, by God, the Constitution will provide you health care if you get sick." And of course low-information people all over the country cheered, got rabidly happy over such a premise.

They started polling it, and a majority of people originally supported the whole concept, that health care is a right. But with the advent of Obamacare and all of the inherent problems, that's not now a majority point of view. A majority of Americans do not view it as a right, and when that's the case, they are not going to support redistribution to make it happen. And when they don't support redistribution, they're not supporting liberalism, they're not supporting socialism.

Now, I don't expect that to stop Democrats. They're governing against the will of the people even now. Democrats don't care. I mean, ego-wise they'd love to have it, but it doesn't stop them, public opinion doesn't stop them. Let me remind you, case in point, 2014 midterms. Just as in 2010, the Democrat Party got shellacked. The Democrat Party lost seats, now combined with 2010, over 1,200 seats, electoral seats from the US Congress all the way down to local town council all over the country. It was a huge shellacking.

And you remember Mitch McConnell, shortly after the Republicans took control of the Senate, expressing his surprise that Obama had not moved to the center as a result. I'm sure you remember that. It was a ridiculous assumption. It's rooted in the old days that politicians responded to public opinion. If the public rejected something that they truly believed, then in order to maintain public opinion and hope to be elected in the future, they had to moderate their views.

Here Obama was doubling down. Not only was he not moving to the center, he was moving further to the left, in utter defiance of the voters, and Mitch McConnell couldn't understand it. The Republicans, when they think they lose and public opinion goes against them, they all of a sudden favor amnesty. They come out in favor of whatever it is the people that voted against them believe, 'cause that's what you have to do in politics. But you see, folks, the Democrat Party doesn't care about public opinion. They'd love to have it, but it doesn't stop them if they don't.

I maintain to you that Barack Obama and the Democrat Party have been governing against the will of the people for the past six years. I think Obama was elected under a false pretense. A lot of people thought they were getting something other than what they got. I don't think the American people voted for this. They didn't vote for this debacle called Obamacare. They didn't vote for Iran to get nuclear weapons. The American people didn't vote for the 30-hour workweek. The American people didn't vote for an $18 trillion national debt. The American people didn't vote for anything that they're getting here.

Hasn't stopped Obama, has it? Hasn't stopped Democrat Party. So this New York Times piece said they're worried that people are losing faith in the whole philosophy behind the redistribution of wealth. It's interesting, but it isn't gonna stop 'em. It's just gonna make 'em angrier. "Oh, you don't believe what we believe, huh? Well, you like tax increases? Here, take that." Democrats do not react kindly to people who do not support them. And public opinion, necessary evil. If they can find a way to ignore it, they damn well will.

RUSH: Harris Wofford, senator, Pennsylvania, was 1991 through 1995. Harris Wofford is the man responsible for the claim that health care was a right because you're entitled to a lawyer. If you are accused of something and you can't afford a lawyer, Constitution gives you a lawyer, should give you health care. "Yay, yay." He was a senator from 1991 to 1995, one term, defeated by Rick Santorum. He was only in there because John Heinz died in office. A helicopter crash or collision between the airplane he was on and a helicopter. That freed up Teresa Heinz to marry the haughty John Kerry, who had served in Vietnam. He took his time on that, but plans were, you know, well laid.

Health care has always been a responsibility, a duty, even, but never a “right”. To declare control of this part of your life to be a “right” is to relinquish any accountability for securing the very best care FOR YOURSELF to somebody else.

And the “somebody else” won’t be all that motivated. Especially when it becomes a dollar item, and therefore subject to rationing, or even denial.

Of course health care isn’t a right. Nothing can be a right that requires the active participation of another person in order for you to partake of it.

If health care was a right, then if it happened that nobody chose to be a doctor, nurse, etc., the government would be in the position of having to deprive a certain number of people of their freedoms by forcing them to become doctors, nurses, etc. in order to ensure someone else’s “right” to healthcare.

a majority of people originally supported the whole concept, that health care is a right.

This type of false right to man made goods and services involves a contradiction.If my right entails a right to your labor or its product, you cannot have a right to liberty or property.

4 posted on 04/16/2015 12:39:07 PM PDT by mjp ((pro-{God, reality, reason, egoism, individualism, natural rights, limited government, capitalism}))

At the rate American doctors are retiring or fleeing to avoid Barry Care he will have to do just that or continue to import India’s finest night school graduates of here.

The whole premise is, Edsall is voicing concern felt by many on the left that the larger liberal agenda of the redistribution of wealth, the redistribution of income is in trouble because Obamacare is not working and in fact may be turning voters against the concept.

Obamacare's so bad it's not even working for most of the poor...

Actually, health care is a right in exactly the same sense that keeping and bearing arms is a right and freedom of press is a right, albeit not enumerated in the Constitution. My right to keep and bear arms and to publish pamphlets or a newspaper must be exercised at my own expense (or with the backing of willing supporters or investors). My right to keep and bear arms does not create a claim on my fellow citizens to provide me with a rifle and ammuntion, and my right to freedom of the press obligates no one to buy me a printing press, ink and paper.

In fact, Obamacare is a massive infringement of our natural right to health care.

8 posted on 04/16/2015 2:04:43 PM PDT by The_Reader_David (And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come, then you will know...)

At the rate American doctors are retiring or fleeing to avoid Barry Care he will have to do just that or continue to import India’s finest night school graduates of here.

Step one is lowering the requirements to get into Medical School. And that one has already started...

As Walter Williams put it, “For one person to get a thing without paying for it, another person must pay for that thing without getting it”.

12 posted on 04/16/2015 4:26:55 PM PDT by tet68 ( " We would not die in that man's company, that fears his fellowship to die with us...." Henry V.)

I used to talk to the PreMeds at a local University each semester. I would ask them how many felt health care was a right. Usually about half. My next question was, “How do you propose to get knowledge I have spent a lifetime acquiring out of my head against my will?”

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