Brian Beutler of Salon recently posted an article titled, “Right-wing Extremists face new moral conundrum.” The article operates on the assumption that once Obamacare starts firing on all cylinders---or, as the author more humbly put it, “When Healthcare.gov actually starts working”---Republicans will have to choose between “politics” and “their constituents’ health.” This so-called “moral conundrum” results from the fact that Obamacare caused tens of millions of people to lose their coverage; Beutler writes: “Once Healthcare.gov is working at high capacity, [Republicans] will owe people with canceled coverage more than just the play-acting they’ve offered for the past month.” Beutler refers to this situation as a “moral imperative,” and explicitly identifies the “conundrum” in the final sentence of his article: “Democrats will be helping these people find such coverage. Will Republicans?”
It seems that Beutler has failed to consider the fact that this choice, between “politics” and “constituents’ health,” was entirely made possible by Barack Obama, and that politicians engaging in “politics” was an entirely foreseeable occurrence. If Obamacare was designed in such a way that it required the cooperation of Republicans in order to operate effectively, why pass it without a single Republican vote? Furthermore, if helping those with cancelled plans find new ones represents a “moral imperative,” what is the moral status of the law that caused them to lose their coverage in the first place? If we envision a scenario in which Republicans fail to live-up to this contrived-duty to help people find coverage, how can we spare Obamacare, the system that brought this duty into existence, from a moral-indictment? The progressives love to paint Republicans, and the Tea Party in particular, as ignorant, incompetent, anti-worker, anti-entitlement, racists; and yet they created a health care system that relied-upon these loathsome know-nothings in order to operate effectively? I believe they’ve just brought the term, “specious-imperative,” into existence…
It seems that Beutler has failed to consider the fact that this choice, between “politics” and “constituents’ health,” was entirely made possible by Barack Obama, and that politicians engaging in “politics” was an entirely foreseeable occurrence. If Obamacare was designed in such a way that it required the cooperation of Republicans in order to operate effectively, why pass it without a single Republican vote? Furthermore, if helping those with cancelled plans find new ones represents a “moral imperative,” what is the moral status of the law that caused them to lose their coverage in the first place? If we envision a scenario in which Republicans fail to live-up to this contrived-duty to help people find coverage, how can we spare Obamacare, the system that brought this duty into existence, from a moral-indictment? The progressives love to paint Republicans, and the Tea Party in particular, as ignorant, incompetent, anti-worker, anti-entitlement, racists; and yet they created a health care system that relied-upon these loathsome know-nothings in order to operate effectively? I believe they’ve just brought the term, “specious-imperative,” into existence…
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