# Is the Democratic party headed in the wrong direction?

**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-democratic-party-headed-in-the-wrong-direction/579187
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [April 21, 2011, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-democratic-party-headed-in-the-wrong-direction/579187 "2011-04-21T05:15:35Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Page:** 4

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### Author: ![Whambulance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@Whambulance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whambulance)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2011, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-democratic-party-headed-in-the-wrong-direction/579187/61 "2011-05-04T00:34:24Z")

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> [@septimus](#):
>
> (“as it does now” means pre-Obama? Did you explain how to achieve the “efficiency and less gouging”?)
> 
> With two children, I do agree that I have PERSONAL responsibility as wage-earner to afford their health insurance. Indeed, it is one particular reason I do not live in the U.S.A. But some people simply cannot afford health insurance, especially if they have, e.g. a genetic predisposition to kidney disorder. Is your view the laissez-faire one, that the lives of such uninsurable people are not cost-effective?
> 
> The economics of American health care have been debated in prior threads. If you have a particular contrary view on that, can you point to a prior thread please? Is it your view that lazy welfare mama is a big part of the problem when she takes her kids to the E.R. for ear infections (the only way she can get free care)? I’m not trying to put words in your mouth; I just want to better understand this connection between personal responsibility and health care finance.

The funny thing is, as I was typing the OP I remember asking myself if I really wanted to include healthcare in my points at all. I assumed the conversation would devolve into an argument about my wanting to snatch the life-force from poor infected welfare babies and perhaps use it grease the tracks on one of my tanks.

Seriously though, if you’d take a look back at my original post, my only goal was really to see if anyone else had noticed a little less emphasis on personal responsibility in the left agenda. Not that it was specifically related to health care or at all purposeful, just more so than it was say a decade ago.

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