Red Right and Blue - 04/15/10

As members of a democracy in which the government gains its legitimacy and mandate from the opinion of the majority, we take as truth the assumption that government rules for the common good.

On Sunday, March 21, Congress passed the reconciliation healthcare bill. The next day the President signed it into law. By doing so, these political representatives publically voiced their opinion that the healthcare bill would add to the common welfare of the American people. Yet the deals made in the weeks and days before the vote tell another story.

The claim made by the Democrats that there is great approval for the healthcare bill outside of government is not false. American Association for Retired People (AARP), American Medical Association (AMA), the major pharmaceutical companies, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN), American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFCCME) and many, many others all pledged their support for the new healthcare bill.

However, with each of these pledges came special benefits for the causes of these groups. For example, AMA’s support for the bill is coupled with a demand for another bill preventing cuts in physician payments under Medicare for the elderly, while the support from AARP came along with a new advertisement for Medicare Supplement Insurance, and the AFCCME support was coupled with the knowledge that it (as well as the politicians pushing the bill) would be exempted from the bill’s ramifications.

The AARP is a representative and revealing case. AARP is more an insurance company than a senior citizen organization. It offers the chief medical insurance competition to Medicare Advantage. Medicare Advantage is a better insurance. Against the interest of its senior citizens members, the big insurance company known as AARP supported the health care bill. Thus the support of these groups is not proof of the bill’s advocacy for the common good but proof of its support for special interests — which, after all, is what these organizations pledge to support.

On the other hand, the American people pledge no such support. The Rasmussen poll for the day on which healthcare passed put 54 percent of American citizens against the bill.

This is not to say that healthcare reform of any kind is against the interests and wishes of the majority of the American people. Republicans and Democrats, special interest groups and the American public all agree that the present system of healthcare is neither beneficial nor sustainable. However, the adverse effects of this bill far outweigh its benefits.

Today, American public debt has almost reached the immense height of $13 trillion — a fact which clearly contributes negatively to the common good of all Americans in the availability of jobs, the stagnation of salaries and a lowering of the standard of living. To increase this number could do nothing but further damage the common good, and the healthcare bill, although claimed to have no impact on the American deficit, would certainly be a further drain upon the American government’s resources.

As Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) made clear in the healthcare summit immediately before the vote, the healthcare bill is one riddled with hidden costs. From counting 10 years of tax increases and Medicaid increases to pay for six years of healthcare spending, to using $52 billion in Social Security money already promised to future social security recipients, and $72 billion from the CLASS Act already promised to pay for future ailments as funds for the bill, and from counting half a trillion dollars of Medicaid cuts twice to separating related bills (like the “doc fix” bill, which costs around $46 billion per year) to hide expenses, the presentation of this bill has hidden the actual toll it will take upon the American economy — the actual toll it will take on the common good.

Thus, the passing of the healthcare bill was a moment in American history when the government forgot the two principles upon which it is based: the dedication to the common good and the importance of the opinion of the majority of the people. It was a moment of big selfishness by big special interests. But I must commend my own generation when they support health care since the immediate and long term effects are all to their disadvantage.

They will have to purchase health insurance that they may not need or they will be fined. And they shall inherit the bankrupt nation that the health care bill will help to produce. It surely is selfless to sacrifice their own good and the national good to the profit of the big insurance and pharmaceutical companies.