So here’s the deal on healthcare reform. I get it. I get that everyone needs and SHOULD HAVE healthcare.
However.
Socializing healthcare is not the way to accomplish this task. I often hear, when I express my opinion on the matter, “don’t you care about your fellow men? don’t you want them to have healthcare, too?” I think just about everybody’s facebook status these days reads something to the effect that “no one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick.”
I agree with ALL these sentiments. Of course I care about my fellow men. Of course I think everyone should have the healthcare they need. Of course no one should die because they cannot afford healthcare or go broke because they get sick. But that’s not the point. When people try to play me this “don’t you care,” card, I can’t help feeling the hypocrisy of it all. You’ve missed the point. That’s not how CARING is supposed to work. I don’t show I care by forcing everyone in the nation to “care” and unwillingly give money to the poor/uninsured/insert-your-socialized-program-here. I show I care by donating myself, utilizing my own agency and will, to help those in need. I show I care by volunteering, by ACTUALLY serving and giving my time and talents. It takes no effort at all to put up a facebook status calling everyone heartless SOB’s who OBVIOUSLY don’t care about their fellow human beings because they don’t support this particular brand of healthcare reform. On that same token, it takes no effort at all to have the government take more money from you every month to do something you should be doing by free will. Why do you need the government to take your money and decide what it’s going to be used for when it comes to charity? Because you’re LAZY and don’t want to waste your time going out and helping the poor yourself. You’ll say, I just don’t have time for that or whatever your excuse is… but your passive “charity” isn’t charity at all… it’s mandated taxes. There are no blessings in heaven for what is forcefully taken from you. Only when we exercise our will to help others are we doing what the Lord would have us do.
That’s why communism is such a bad idea. Socialism is the same. Helping others, having charity, CANNOT come from mandates and acts of force. At that point, it ceases to be charity. Do I think we ALL should give more of our time and energies to charities we believe in? Do I believe that we are all capable of giving and doing a little more when we donate to worthy causes? Absolutely. Do I believe that everyone should have access to healthcare and that we, as individuals, have a certain obligation to look out for the welfare of our fellow men? Obviously. But it CANNOT be mandated.
Socialism removes the desire and the personal connection one can feel by serving and being served. I don’t know anyone who gets that warm fuzzy when they see the line on their paystub marked “taxes.” The reason so many in socialized welfare programs are ungrateful is because they have no sense of those who are serving them. It’s not a service anymore. It’s something they are “owed.” You are not OWED anything. It is out of the goodness of others’ hearts that you will be looked after when you are down. It is then your social obligation to go out and serve others, as others have served you. This humanity, this social interconnectedness is lost when the government seizes control of my opportunities to serve others.
As if these reasons are not enough – I have personal reasons to feel that socialized healthcare makes no practical sense.
With a thousand points to argue… I will merely argue one, because it affected me personally. I became very sick a few years ago and the first doctor I went to was a tool. I didn’t like him or feel like he addressed my problem. I saw two more doctors in Utah, all who generally made me feel the same way. My father, having worked in a school district always had great health benefits while I was growing up. But at this point, my father was retired, now on medicare, and had to pay separately and independently my healthcare (he and my mother agreed to do this while I was still in college.) Fortunately, they paid for really great health coverage. When things weren’t getting better, I withdrew from school and went home for the summer. My mother had made me an appointment with a doctor in Portland and felt really strongly that I should keep the appointment (even though I kept saying, ALL these other doctors say to wait.) I went, however, and IMMEDIATELY knew I’d found the right place. The clinicians were wonderful, I felt so at home, and the doctor had pioneered a new surgery that was exactly what I needed. MRI’s now showed a drastic change in my status, and this doctor had to act quickly (much quicker than the prior surgeons thought would be necessary.)
If socialized healthcare had existed at this time, I cannot say what would have happened. I imagine, however, that instead of making my parents pay for healthcare for me, I would have gone on that, thinking that nothing could possibly come up that this “free” healthcare wouldn’t cover. I made next to nothing, so certainly I would have qualified. But after having seen one specialist, this social healthcare would have said, “one doctor said everything is fine, so everything is fine.” How differently things could have turned out had I stopped at one doctor.
I’m not saying the system we have now is perfect, or even a good one. But it’s much better than the one they are proposing. Please don’t take away my right to act as a free agent. Don’t give my employer incentive to stop insuring me. Don’t give me and my peers incentive to not find the BEST healthcare for ourselves and our situations. Most of all, please do not take away my fundamental right to act charitably toward my fellow men. I have the RIGHT to the joy that only comes through willful sevice.
Mandated charity always faileth.
(and, yes, mr. obama... i hope you and your fishermen find fishy speech in here...)
