WHAT ISN’T  RIGHT ABOUT AMERICA: I guess another sign that life might, prayerfully, be returning to normal is that I once again feel the urge to get a few things off my chest that have to do with domestic, not foreign, policy.

 

I get the feeling that a lot of my fellow conservo-bloggers endeavor to overlook some of the genuine problems in a pure free-market capitalist system. In a nutshell: The safety nets we have exist not only to take hard-earned money out of the pockets of the deserving, but also because there are always plenty of people that, through no fault of their own, just can’t quite ‘measure up’ and contribute enormously to our economy. This may be because they’re sick or injured or unemployed… or it could be, and I don’t mind saying it, that maybe in some cases they’re just not as really wonderful and smart as the rest of us are. Does that mean these people should just be left to fend for themselves? Not in any kind of fundamentally decent society.

 

I’m also getting tired of apologists for our health-care system, and these apologists include many of my favorite bloggers and pundits. Health care is a basic human right—and too many of us these days don’t have access to it. I’m sorry, but you’ve got to have your head way, way, way up in the clouds not to see that something stinks in our health care system. Am I the only one on the right side of the fence who thinks that there is something unholy in the American ménage-à-trois of HMOs, insurance companies, and pharmaceutical manufacturers? Just saying that “socialized medicine is no better” doesn’t cut it, either. Neither does the disingenuous plea that medical costs in this country continue to skyrocket because our pharmoconglomerates have to spend half our GNP every year researching the super-duper wonderful drugs that most of us can’t afford anyway. These are just cheap cop-outs to avoid facing the issue that the “holy trinity” is getting obscenely rich while fewer and fewer Americans are able to afford the most basic health care. Again, this isn’t the same thing as Sam Walton or Bill Gates getting ridiculously wealthy; health care, unlike shopping at Wal-Mart or using Windows, is—again—a basic human right..

 

Nope, what our “holy trinity” is really up to is much more reminiscent of Saddam’s robbery of his own people so he could build ridiculously opulent pleasure palaces. It’s that offensive, and that wrong. Am I going to have more to say on this in the future? You’d better believe it.

 

posted by Alois on 05/06/03