Jeff- Yeah, buy your own insurance on $8 an hour. That’s a lark. And free help from the hospital doesn’t help with day to day issues. Your four year old has a nasty cough; what do you do? If your doctor visit is free, you can take her in, get it checked, and find out that, yes it’s only a cold. If that visit will cost you $50–a day’s wages–you start having to say “well let’s wait and see if it cures itself.” And when it doesn’t, then you take her in and find out it’s been a serious, untreated condition all along.
The issue is not that health care is a constitutional right, or a legal obligation or something. The point is that there are people who are not getting adequate health care and that we should do something to help them because it’s a MORAL issue. Because we CARE, not because we have to. Because we (feel free to exclude yourself) GIVE A SHIT ABOUT OUR FELLOWMAN.
Personally, as a political conservative, I’m not crazy about the idea of the federal government running things. And certainly Hillary gives me the heebie-jeebies. But I’ve been in the real world enough to know that under the current system doesn’t work for many many many people. Somehow, it’s got to improve. Quite frankly, your let-them-eat-cake attitude disgusts me.
And Phil, it’s sad to say but I have to agree with your last paragraph, except to say that it is not “contempt” so much as “ignorance.” People are raised in white collar suburbs and like to think they deserve it. Thinking you “deserve” ANYthing is (for a Christian) terrible theology, but that’s another discussion. And keep in mind that, despite the way the media paints things, most Republicans are not Christians, nor are all conservative Christians Republicans. Jimmy Carter is, theologically, a very conservative Southern Baptist. And the word “some” you used is a crucial caveat.
Nonetheless, your point, regrettably, remains.