Joshua Igor
The richest nation in the world and this guy’s talking about some sort of Mad Max hellscape.
When Ron Johnson first ran for the U.S. Senate in 2010, he said his primary motivation was to rescind the Affordable Care Act, which he argued would have made the open heart surgery his daughter received as a newborn in the late 1980s unlikely.
“The procedure that saved her, and has given her a chance at a full life, was available because America has a free-market system that has advanced medicine at a phenomenal pace,” the Republican Senator from Wisconsin wrote in an op-ed at the time. It was published in the Wall Street Journal under the subhead: “My daughter probably wouldn’t have survived in a system where bureaucrats stifle innovation and ration care.”
Fast forward to last Friday, September 29, in New Berlin, Wisconsin. Fresh off an announcement that the vote on the Affordable Care Act “repeal and replace” bill he co-authored with four other Senators had been indefinitely postponed, Johnson fielded a question from Madeline Soiney, a student at New Berlin West High School: “Is health care a privilege or right?”
“I think it’s probably more of a privilege,” Johnson replied, asking rhetorically, “Do you consider food a right? Do you consider clothing a right? Do you consider shelter a right?”
Yes, yes and yes is what most people would answer, consistent with a basic respect of America’s social compact. But that’s not the direction Johnson was heading.
“What we have as rights is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” he continued. Never mind that the “right to life” part is a bit ephemeral when you’re on the sidewalk bleeding, starving, or freezing to death. “Past that point everything else is a limited resource that we have to use our opportunities given to us so we can afford those things.”
Limited resource? Really? The United States is the richest nation in the world and we spend more on our military than the next seven countries combined and this guy’s talking about some sort of Mad Max hellscape.
And health care, like food, clothing, and shelter, is only for those who can use their “opportunities” to “afford those things”? Perhaps because they managed, like Johnson, to marry into massive wealth? Got it. Would you like some Grey Poupon with that elitism, Senator?
Johnson went on to approvingly cite fellow Senator Rand Paul’s widely panned statement that, if you believe health care is a right, it “means you believe in slavery.”
Johnson explained: “If you consider health care a right, well, who is going to satisfy that right? And those people that have the skills to satisfy that right, what does that make them if they’re forced to provide you with that rightful product or service?”
Just think what might happen to the super wealthy and their children if we start handing out life-saving rights willy-nilly to the non-wealthy and their children?
“So I think it’s obviously a privilege to have food and shelter,” Johnson said in summation, adding that it is the role of public officials to create “as much prosperity as possible” so more people can afford these “privileges.”
To review: The repeal advocate who claims the Affordable Care Act would probably have killed his daughter by rationing health care has no problem with rationing it to others based on their inability to pay. Good to know.