You're On Your Own, Folks

 

            Lots of writers have jumped on Paul Ryan’s comment that “The conceit of Obamacare is that young and healthy people are going to go into the market and pay for the older, sicker people.”  Of course that’s the definition of all health insurance, whether it’s an employee program, an insurance company pool, or even Medicare. 

            But what’s more significant is what Ryan’s comment implies about the nature of any civilized, or even sane, society.  Marxism may have been over-reaching with the slogan “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs," but it’s closer to the way the world needs to work than its opposite, whether we phrase that opposite as “to each his own,” “every man for himself,” or “God helps those who help themselves.”  (The last, by the way, is actually believed by nearly ¼ of Americans to be in the Bible.)

            Let’s look at some of the arguments that can be extrapolated from Ryan’s position:

·      “Homeowners’ insurance asks people whose homes haven’t been burned or blown away to pay for those whose homes have.”

·      “Life insurance asks people who haven’t died to pay for people who have.”  (Not, I think,    what Jesus meant with the metaphor “Let the dead bury their dead.”

·      “Schools ask people who can read to help people who can’t.”

·      “Planes ask people who can fly them to fly people who can’t.”  (See also trains, buses, taxis, uber, lyft, etc.)

·      “Beaches and pools ask people who can swim to help people who can’t.”

·      “The Red Cross / FEMA, etc. ask people who aren’t in disaster areas to help people who are.”

And, of course, the whole system of government depends on taxation, which asks people who have money to give it, at least part of the time, to people who don’t, people who are educated to pay to educate those who aren’t yet educated, people who are housed to help people who aren’t, and so on and so forth.

            We’ve come a long way from “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,” to “Don’t ask your country to do anything for you, especially if you actually need it.”

Sidenote: There’s a great moment in A Fish Called Wanda where Jamie Lee Curtis dismisses Kevin Kline’s claims to be an intellectual:  “Now let me correct you on a couple of things, OK? Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not "Every man for himself." And the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked them up.”