A Major Difference Between a Liberal and a Current Day Republican

Dear Friends,

This morning both David Brooks (here) and Paul Krugman (here) wrote Op-ed pieces in the New York Times about the yesterday's healthcare summit.  David Brooks approaches life as a conservative, and Paul Krugman approaches life as a liberal.   Both men are intelligent and articulate, and we should be open to their views.

However, I must say that after reading their respective columns this morning, I was skeptical that they were discussing the same event. 

David Brooks concludes, "Health care reform probably will not get passed this year."  Paul Krugman conlcudes, "But Democrats can have the last laugh. All they have to do — and they have the power to do it — is finish the job, and enact health reform."

We all know that we tend to hear what we want to hear. 

The reason that it is impossible to bridge the gap between President Obama's health care goals and the Republicans is that liberals believe in social justice and the current brand of Republicans do not. 

The Republican plan would insure an additional 3 million people, and President Obama's plan would cover an additional 30 million people.  The United States is the only developed country in the world that does not cover all people.  The Republican response is that the United States has the best health care in the world.  That is just not true.  It may be true that those that can pay can get the best health care in the world.  But based on the health care that is actually available to all Americans we rank very poorly.

The Republican mantra these days is that we cannot afford it (with it being anything that provides benefits to the middle class and the poor).  Representative Cantor, the number two Republican in the House said, ''We have a very difficult gap to bridge here. We just can't afford this. That's the ultimate problem.''

We heard that same refrain today when the Senate failed once again to extend unemployment benefits.  Senator Bunning a Republican from Kentucky, singlehandedly stopped a one month extension of extended unemployment benefits because it would raise the deficit by $10 billion.  Here is the New York Times article.

In my home state of Minnesota, Governor Pawlenty, who has been rapidly moving to the right in an effort to win the 2012 Republican Presidential nomination recently veto a bill to continue funding of General Assistance Medical Care.  Here is an article describing the issue in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
The refrain is the same.  We cannot afford to do this or that.

The fact is we choose not to be able to afford.  We pass tax cuts, disproportionately benefiting the rich, because they are popular and please the money that runs campaigns, and then we claim we cannot afford to provide decent health care to all people, we can't afford to pay teachers a wage that attracts and retains great teachers, we can't afford to fix our roads and bridges so they fall down and kill people, etc.

We need to stand up and be clear.  Many things that our government refuses to pay for kill people every day.  45,000 of our fellow citizens die every year, one every 12 minutes from a lack of health care.  (here)
We can argue about what we can afford and what we cannot afford, but how can the richest country in the world kill 45,000 of its inhabitants every year by failing to provide them with adequate medical care?  We can also argue about the legal definition of killing, but if we knowingly permit a situation to exist that we can change and by not making that change 45,000 people will die, isn't that murder?

The richest country in the world that has perhaps the best medical care in the world available to it is not doing well today because our government says it cannot afford to provide that care to all its people.

Thanks for reading and please comment,

The Unabashed Liberal