Ask Stonekettle Station About Healthcare

Today’s search phrase:

Why don’t liberals understand the concept of limited resources?

Are you kidding me? 

Geez, I dunno. Maybe because they’re too busy trying to keep you conservative wankers from either bulldozing or blowing up the entire planet? I mean, if I had to guess.

 

This is one of several hundred search hits I’ve had this weekend – all obviously related to the healthcare debate.

Once the healthcare bill passed the House, boy the anti-liberal googling started ramping right up.  Then came the Senate vote this weekend – and that’s when I really started seeing the ZOMG! panic and bewilderment.  

I find the outraged consternation on the conservative side of the aisle amusing. I find the ignorant “we must take back America for real Americans (because as you know healthcare = NAZI!)” rhetoric stupid.

But, seriously here folks, when conservatives start talking about “limited resources” and how liberals don’t understand the concept I’ve really got to throw down the bullshit flag. 

It is Conservatives who seem to have no damned concept of limited resources – especially when it comes to the environment, or energy, or Soldiers lives for that matter. It’s only when it comes to taking care of their fellow human beings that they suddenly want to talk about conservation and husbanding of resources – and by resources what they mean is money.  See, it’s ok to spend shitloads of money on tax rebates and stealth bombers and faith based initiatives, but it’s not ok to spend money on things like healthcare or taking care of your neighbors. Conservatives seem to find no irony in the fact that they can move entire armies and all their equipment across three continents in less than two weeks in order to prosecute a war, but can’t get emergency supplies to hurricane survivors on their own coasts in anything under a month.  Conservatives seem to find nothing wrong with shooting abortion doctors, but then completely wash their hands of any responsibility for the impoverished and needy children who surround them every single day in this country. They throw a can of beans or expired peas into the food drive box at work and think that’s enough, they’ve done their part for world hunger.

Conservatives are suddenly talking about limited resources?  As in what? We can’t pay to take care of our own countrymen? So then what? Fuck ‘em? Is that right?

We built trillions of dollars worth of nuclear bombs and we were ready to kill every single living thing on the planet for freedom and democracy – but we can’t spend a dime to make sure our own countrymen have access to a doctor?  What the fuck were we preserving our way of life for then?  I look at conservative bumper-stickers stuck on the back of $70,000 Hummers and Lincoln Navigators and monstrous gas guzzling Ford pickups and these are the people talking about limited resources?  It’s not just that they can’t afford any more taxes, it’s that there aren’t even enough doctors to see all the poor people who will suddenly have healthcare. There will be lines and long waits. Doctors, these are the limited resources we’re talking about right?

I find this way of thinking morally bankrupt and it’s one of the principle reasons that I am no longer a member of the Republican party.

Back in the 1930s, when the liberals on Capital Hill and the White House were pushing Social Security through Congress, it was the same stupid arguments, from the same stupid selfish people.  Conservatives said it would bankrupt the country, it would put good god fearin’ insurance companies out of business, it was socialism, it was Marxism, it would free women and minorities (swear to God, this was an argument against Social Security – it would free woman from dependence on men, and it would give minorities the same retirement insurance as whites, which might give both women and minorities funny ideas), blah, blah, same shit different century. Conservatives stood on their principles and voted against the Social Security Act at every turn.

They lost.

And Social Security insurance became a national program available to everyone.

Nowadays, there are damned few retired conservatives who don’t get a Social Security check every month – so much for their vaunted principles. So few conservatives reject Social Security based on their conservative principles, in fact, that the percentage is indistinguishable from zero.

I predict that it won’t be long before the same is true of universal healthcare.