[Previously on The US Healthcare Conversation Is Shifting Toward Universal Care: We’re at a point in civilization where we can look for ways to care for individuals within a system that caters to everyone’s needs, to each their own, all the while figuring out ways to prevent the welfare swindlers and scroungers, of whom there are plenty, from abusing the system.]
It’s like the issue of guns, or drugs. Just because some individuals abuse guns doesn’t mean we have to outlaw gun ownership, claim most republicans, and they’re right, just as most democrats are right when they argue that simply because some people abuse certain drugs, we don’t have to go all blanket prohibition on everything. Different topics, same premise, same valid logic. Sorry Democrats, Republicans, you’re saying the same thing for two different items, making the same arguments, pretending that the other side is speaking gibberish.
Well, guess what: the same argument holds for insurance, too. Just because some individuals are career welfare-ists and master scroungers doesn’t mean that the entire notion of providing universal healthcare is a faulty premise that should be banned, trashed, and never spoken of again.
Think of it more like water, or electricity. You have to provide it to everyone, even though some will abuse it, waste it, mismanage or lose it. Subsidies will cover the losses, sad but true, not because we’re socialists but because it’s common sense. Because it works down the line — a country not dying of thirst; a country not living in the dark, or being thrown in the ditch when parts of it get sick. Keeping hardship at bay is a good thing. Subsidies make the union a union. E pluribus unum. Out of many, one (functional) union!
We’re talking a functional union, one that makes do, and progress, and something out of its diverse resources, finding ways to apply itself and extend its presence. The affluent helping the destitute so that the system may prosper, creating more opportunities down the line. It doesn’t get more straightforward than that, at least in terms of principles and ideology, on which this whole issue is being fought. Ideology — the sound kind — demands that nothing is prohibited on grounds of it going wrong on occasion. Ban the abuse, not the entire issue.
Regulation is a stronger alternative to prohibition, one which treats the anomalies of any given application as crimes, allowing the process at large to operate as normal.
Drugs, guns, health insurance . . . no blanket bans, no crazy witch-hunts. Only regulation can deal with the problems at hand, making things easier for those who intend to use the system, and harder for those who plan on abusing it. Let the ideologies be coherent across items and staples. Favor regulation instead of prohibition in one area, and you have to favor it in all others, too, lest you become a hypocrite, plus your own worst enemy, giving grounds to the opposition to resist your demand for regulation when your favorite staple comes up in turn.
Part 3 to follow