From: eisimps@cie.uoregon.edu (Eileen Simpson)
Subject: Re: Clinton's Health Ideas.
Summary: Let them eat cake (or sports cars)
Organization: University of Oregon Campus Information Exchange
Distribution: usa
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 92 05:11:52 GMT

In article <21506@rpp386.lonestar.org> jfh@rpp386.cactus.org (John F. Haugh II) writes:
>In article <18qf74INNsmo@agate.berkeley.edu> lazarus@ocf.berkeley.edu (Andrew J. Lazarus) writes:
>>This week's "In These Times", a left-wing magazine, starts off with yet
>>another anecdote about a working poor person whose sick daughter could
>>not see a doctor for her earache (no medical insurance at Mom's
>>low-wage job) until it was bad enough to have to go to the ER. By then
>>strep had turned into rheumatic fever, result: permanent heart damage.
>>We already have rationing of health care in the US: we ration by price.
>
>If you insist on reading left-wing propaganda, you will continue to
>have problems understanding the free market.
>
>There was an anecdote in a magazine I'm thinking about starting.  It
>explained how we already ration sports cars.  You see, we ration then
>by price.
>
>If you want the nicer things in life, you have to work VERY HARD.  I
>busted my ass getting where I am today, and I resent people like you
>who want to take the fruits of MY labors and give them to people who
>don't.

You are one very strange dude.

I don't think I have ever met someone who could compare a child needing
health care with people not being able to uniformily acquire sports cars.
I suppose you feel that when the peasant class has children with permanent
heart damage because they can't get medical care, it really can't concern
you--or interupt your work on your sports car.

In most of the developed world, medical care is not considered one of the
"nicer things in life."  It is considered a basic.

As for your statement that you work "VERY HARD", I want to point out 2
things:  (1) you probably have never worked very hard (let alone VERY HARD)
in your life.  You have never been starving, or beaten, or physically
exhausted from doing back-breaking labor on an inadequate diet.  You are
full of it if you think you have worked hard because you stay up every
night to do your homework.  (2) I will bet that you are, in fact, the child
of privilege who confuses normal exertion with hard work.  You are probably
weak, and would not last a day with the working poor.

Many people work *VERY VERY HARD* and do not get the nicer things in life.
They barely acquire the basics.  You do not have nicer things because you
work harder or are more deserving.  You have been gifted:  by the accident
of the family or nation you were born into, or by your ability to acquire
knowledge.  Being gifted is not the same thing as being deserving.

Some day, as you get older, people like you encounter life's random
heartaches and pain.  As you do, please remember your view that people get
what they "deserve" and have worked for.  You find that the meritocracy you
live by is a fallacy, and that you will be left to explain your child's
death or disease, or whatever other heartache awaits you (and it does) with
the same dead soul you have offered others.  When you have to face your own
powerlessness or damn yourself for inadequate efforts, what will you
choose?  

I bet you don't stick to the attitudes you have stated above.  You will
expect a compassion that you do not offer others.  Remember that.

Finally, if you want to call me a liberal, I want you to know this:
I am a Republican activist.  I am only a liberal when I stand next to you.

And I'm proud of the difference.