Engraving by the Brothers Dalziel
I’m still trying to sort out what happened in the Supreme Court spectacle that we witnessed last week. I am struck, as Atlantic Monthly’s Andrew Cohen is struck, by how much more empathy (remember that word? Obama was accused of valuing it when he chose Sonia Sotomayor) the conservative justices had for insurance companies than they had for the millions of Americans who will not get health care if they strike the health care mandate down. Here’s Cohen:
[Justice Samuel Alito] didn’t ask a single question over three days about how the Affordable Care Act’s demise might impact the millions of Americans who already are benefiting from it. But twice in his questions, he expressed concern for the burden the insurance companies might have to bear if only part of the care act, the part without the individual mandate, were to survive.
Katy Giebenhain, an editor with the Seminary Ridge Review (of the Gettysburg Lutheran Seminary), sent me a poem that reminds us of the days when insurance companies would refuse to enroll people for preexisting conditions (or would drop them if they discovered preexisting conditions had existed). If the Supreme Court forces Obamacare to drop the mandate (originally a conservative idea), then we will return to those days. It may have seemed for a while that Robin Hood would redistribute some of the country’s wealth to the poor and the lame (Katy tells me that she was inspired by the recent BBC Robin Hood series), but Nottingham’s sheriff is hoping that the justices will allow him to return to business as usual:
Robin Hood is Gone
Katy Giebenhain
No hatchets, candle fat, Saracen bows.
No windchimed sunlight
shaking the leaves like hair,
the whiiiiiihtt of launched arrows,
bawdy, creative justice.
None of that.
This is how the sacking’s done:
one by one by one.
It’s paper terror,
the American NO
the daylight-dying status quo.
Personified,
a health insurance company rides
into the forest, right now
with an armed escort, good weather,
the confidence of true thieves.
Robin’s gang is gone.
How the sacking is done:
claim by claim by claim.
What we’re up against –
all of us
is darker, stickier.
Picture wagon wheels. Picture
what’s in their path.
Make way for clean kills, legal kills,
assassins at photocopiers.
New feudalism settles in, makes
normal the way
sacking is done today:
trick by trick by trick.
I hope my predictions are wrong but it appears that this Supreme Court leans towards moneyed interests, which doesn’t bode well for Obamacare. Another poet who has choice things to say about such interests (and the legislators who cater to them) is the 17th century religious poet Henry Vaughan, who I’ve been teaching this week. Because of their greed, corrupt politicians (“statesmen”) are shut out from eternity’s “pure and endless light” and move instead in the world’s dark shadows. (You can read the entire poem here and my previous post on it here.) Although they are seen for who they are by “clouds of crying witnesses” (people who have been martyred for their truth telling) and by God, nevertheless they continue to violate divine justice:
The darksome statesman, hung with weights and woe,
Like a thick midnight-fog, mov’d there so slow,
He did nor stay, nor go;
Condemning thoughts—like sad eclipses—scowl
Upon his soul,
And clouds of crying witnesses without
Pursued him with one shout.
Yet digg’d the mole, and lest his ways be found,
Work’d under ground,
Where he did clutch his prey; but one did see
That policy:
Churches and altars fed him; perjuries
Were gnats and flies;
It rain’d about him blood and tears, but he
Drank them as free.
A lot of blood and tears will be alleviated if Obamacare is upheld. They will start raining upon us again (or continue to keep raining) if it is not. That’s what is at stake in the case, not some far-fetched hypothetical that the government could force Americans to eat broccoli.
5 Comments
Based on the title, I think you have it backwards. Obamacare robs from the (relatively) poor young workers to give to the rich retirees. Based on wealth, the 60-69and 70-79 cohorts are much better off than the 20-29 and 30-39, particularly for singles and families with children (married w/two workers, no children are pretty well off).
Frankly, most of social security and medicare, and now Obamacare are generational transfers from young to old, not class transfers from rich to poor.
I always count on you for an alternative view, Kristian. I appreciate you’re willingness to enter the conversation. Does this mean that you’re against social security and medicare? Because you’re right, insurance is always about the healthy paying for the sick. If you are against those social safety net programs, then you are being a lot more honest than those people who want it both ways: coverage for preexisting conditions but no mandate.
A friend of mine pointed out (he was being positive about this) that, when we retire, we are essentially handed a million dollar check and this is one of the biggest redistributions of wealth that our country supports. Without it, the rich would get even richer and many of our elderly would live in wretched poverty. As a country we’ve made a humane choice to do this. But it is indeed a Robin Hood transfer of wealth. Of course, the poor have one view of Robin Hood and the wealthy another.
You mention “poor young workers.” If they are poor, Obamacare will subsidize their purchase of health care (and for that matter allow them to be in their parents’ health care plans until 25). So they’re not without resources. In my ideal world, I’d like for us all to have Medicare-style health care and pay for it through progressive taxation (which means that rich retirees would pay more). I think it unconscionable that young families should have to make agonizing financial decisions about whether or not to purchase health care (and whether to risk having one bad turn of events cost them their house or plunge them into bankruptcy).
First, I did say ‘(relatively) poor’ meaning as a comparison, not in absolute terms.
And in most senses, yes, I am against government pensions and health maintenance. The basis for this is
Nearly all these programs directly or indirectly contradict and / or undermine the biblical teaching on how we are to provide for our society. That is before we get to the abominable / unsustainable current implementations.
For all intents and purposes, social security IS a classic Ponzi scheme:
And what exactly does the Bible say we should be doing about our 30 million uninsured, Kristian?
Social Security is not a Ponzi scheme because the government taxes us to keep it going. (In a Ponzi scheme, sooner or later people stop paying in and then it collapses.) SS is one of our easier problems to fix–the taxes on some paying in would need to be raised. Medicare and Medicaid, by contrast, present us with real challenges because of escalating health costs. In ways that aren’t perfect but are better than what we’re doing now, Obamacare is trying to address this cost problem. The Congressional Budget Office reports that, if fully implemented, Obamacare would slow the rise of costs. If Republicans got on board and were willing to compromise, maybe we could even reform it so that costs would start to come down. To date, however, it appears that Republicans are only interested in repealing it. They have no answers for what to do about the uninsured. (Well, they once did–requiring everyone to have insurance and requiring those who didn’t have it to pay a penalty. Romneycare, in other words. That’s now what they’re objecting to.)
All is not lost. If the ACA is struck down, there will still be states like Massachusetts and Vermont leading on this issue. Through their trials and tribulations, others will follow.