Tuesday January 23, 2007

A HEALTH CARE REFORMER IS A CONSERVATIVE WHO GOT SICK. Cathy Seipp tries to explain why she complained about the shitty health care system that allowed her insurers to raise her deductible and refuse her treatment (until the State intervened on her behalf):

Yes, what is this terrible Republican woman doing complaining about an insurance company? Don't all Republicans side with evil corporate entities against suffering human beings? Isn't that... you know... a basic part of the platform or something?

But for some reason, the only politicians pushing expanded access to health care right now are Republicans: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, who's just left his post to become a (mean old) Republican presidential candidate in 2008.

Fair-weather free-marketeers Romney and Woflcastle are for statist health care plans for the same reason Seipp is: because there's something in it for them. Romney wants to be president; Wolfcastle wants popular support for when he storms the Capitol, bites Nancy Pelosi's neck open, and declares himself dictator; and Seipp wants to justify her cafeteria conservatism sufficiently (and it doesn't take much, apparently) to keep her sinecure at National Review.

The two pols are at least crafty about it -- the plans they propose fall short of what liberals might propose, and anyway what do they care about the mess they may leave behind them in their rise to glory? But Seipp is just clumsy as hell. Instead of making a conservative case for state-sponsored health care (whatever that might be), Seipp just bitches out other people -- some liberal who won't immediately support the Wolfcastle plan, young whippersnappers who would rather bask in such luxuries as "living without a roommate" than buy insurance (or maybe Seipp wants the kids to pay for her procedures: her writing is so confused at this point, it's hard to tell), and people who eat burgers in her hospital waiting room ("Whatever was wrong with them, it certainly didn't affect their appetites").

This is lifestyle conservatism at its best -- conservative because the author feels herself conservative even as she calls upon Big Brother to rescue her.

But I'll say this for Seipp -- at least she is free to jettison, if only for the opportunistic moment, the bare-fanged cruelty of Cato Institute types such as Michael F. Cannon, who approves of the upcoming George Bush health-care proposal because, he cheerfully admits, it will cause Americans to seek less medical treatment -- not because they'll be less sick, but because they won't be able to afford it:

As it stands, the tax code also encourages Americans to consume more health care than they otherwise would. Employer-provided health insurance isn't taxed as income, so workers have an incentive to demand ever more generous health benefits...

The incentive to demand more coverage often causes us to consume more health care than we need -- which, in turn, drives health care prices and insurance premiums skyward.

The president's plan would encourage responsibility by limiting the amount of health insurance we can deduct from our taxes each year...

Yeah, Grandma's not likely to find another husband at her age, so why does she need that wen removed? And how do you know you can't live with your cancer until you've given it a try? Your stupid diseases are making the Invisible Hand feel bad!

"Don't all Republicans side with evil corporate entities against suffering human beings?" Sure, unless it interferes with whatever other scam they're running at any given time.