# Could anti-healthcare reform rhetoric backfire on the Republicans?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-anti-healthcare-reform-rhetoric-backfire-on-the-republicans/532899>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [March 18, 2010, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-anti-healthcare-reform-rhetoric-backfire-on-the-republicans/532899 "2010-03-18T16:05:02Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 108

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**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\
**Post date:** [March 19, 2010, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-anti-healthcare-reform-rhetoric-backfire-on-the-republicans/532899/108 "2010-03-19T18:39:16Z")

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> [@emacknight](#):
>
> Here you go, I had to sift through a lot of crap to find this gem.
> 
> [url=[http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=12041602&postcount=246](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=12041602&postcount=246)]

> [@Oakminster](#):
>
> Well I’ll be damned. It’s not an exact match, but it is reasonably close. Objection withdrawn.

I would direct your attention to this post, further down the thread:

> [@Dispelling US Health Care Myths: Part 1](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dispelling-us-health-care-myths-part-1/525997/268):
>
> All of us (_including_ the liberals) have all answered like **Bricker** did – at least implicitly – through our actions. We all assign a “cost” to helping people. All of us do it.
> 
> You are sitting there at your computer typing your post is consuming electricity that could warm a homeless person on this cold winter’s night. We could certainly tax all citizens more to the point that they can no longer afford to turn their thermostats up as high. Big deal, they can just wear sweaters so that the homeless and poor can stop shivering. We take away a little comfort from the people in heated homes to give warmth to poor folks that have no heat at all. I see no liberals volunteering for such an arrangement. There’s a word for that type of inconsistent behavior: it starts with an “h”.
> 
> There are infinite ways we can help society that can be reworded into gotcha questions of selfishness and morality.
> 
> For example, we could propose to post guards at all bus stops to prevent child abduction. If someone dares to raise the issue of cost, we can just use the weapon of emotional appeal, _“the cost estimations are irrelevant because us moralists on our high-horse believe it is our societal duty to prevent a child from being kidnapped.”_
> 
> You can use that technique for _everything_.

So, I reiterate: it is acceptable for people to die because they can’t afford health care.

And if you don’t agree with that statement, you haven’t thought it through.

The only question is: where is the line drawn? Is it acceptable for any single person to die because he can’t afford whatever health care measures are necessary to save his life? Yes, it is. Is it acceptable for everyone who can’t afford any type of health care to die, even if the cost of that health care is relatively low? No.

Now, where in between those two extremes do we draw our policy line?

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