printAs the “historic meeting at Washington’s Blair House” drags on, Tibor Machan points out just how ill-equipped philosophically the Republicans are to go up against the president’s pitch today for an egalitarian healthcare dispensation.
How about them Philosophical Differences?
By Tibor R. Machan
President Obama and others at the summit Thursday (2/25/10) kept talking about philosophical difference between his team and the Republicans but what did they have in mind?
By “philosophical” most mean “basic,” or “fundamental,” or, possibly “systemic.” Bottom line is that believing in an extensive role of the federal government in determining the health care requirements of American citizens differs from believing in an extensive role by individuals and their providers to do so. The president is right, however, to point out that it is now too late for any Republican to beef about heavy federal involvement in medical care and insurance, given that the Food and Drug Administration has been around for many decades, and Medicare is also a near fixture on the American scene, not to mention the vast amount of government regulations—federal, state, municipal—that we have in our mixed economy. So any Republican who complains about extensive federal involvement is way too late–we already have it in place [thanks to successive Republican administrations], now it is just about how much more of such involvement should be accepted.
There is another philosophical issue that’s hovering over the debates and it is about whether everyone in American must have nearly equal coverage and care. Republicans keep trying to resist this objective for a variety of reasons, including the enormous expense it is projected to involve; the huge differences between different (groups of) American citizens for whom no one-size-fits-all health care and insurance approach will work; the differential burdens such a system will create for Americans, with the young carrying the bulk of it and the old the benefits, and so forth. So it doesn’t look like Obama’s full egalitarian agenda has a chance, not if practical considerations matter in the decisions that will be reached.
On the other hand, the rhetoric of equal provisions for everyone—whether with or without pre-existing conditions, whether prudent or imprudent in their health management, whether fortunate or not as to vulnerability to ailments—is difficult if not impossible for Republicans to rebut. They have no philosophical equipment with which to respond to this egalitarian pitch, so they just have to swallow when the president’s team brings up how unacceptable it is when an insurance company considers pre-existing conditions as disqualifying someone for insurance. Of course any responsible insurance company management would take that into consideration! It may be lamentable, but there is nothing unjust or morally objectionable about this. To maintain otherwise is to deny the insurers their basic right to choose with whom they want to do business and to pursue a profitable enterprise rather than a losing one.
But in order to present this kind of point, one must drop all the hand wringing about what is admittedly lamentable but cannot be helped. People who have been sick, especially with chronic ailments, are not a good risk to insure and those who want to make a living by selling insurance will tend to avoid doing business with them. And that is, really, their basic right in a free society unless they present themselves in the market place as unconcerned with the issue; as open for anyone’s business regardless of pre-existing conditions. But to force the insurers to do business with anyone, never mind their own terms of prudence, is wrong and should not be proposed in a free country however nice it would be to help everyone.
But Republicans are philosophically disarmed from making this point, especially from making it insistently, emphatically, because the Obama team is ready to pounce on them as being mean and nasty if they do. And Republicans are ill-equipped, philosophically—that is when it comes to their basic principles–to keep so insisting. For them to do so they would have to return to the founding principles of the American republic—to mentioning individual rights and so forth. But then, of course, Obama and his team could point fingers at them for being inconsistent, for lacking integrity, seeing how they have accepted a great many egalitarian government edicts, regulations, policies over the the decades.
The little commitment to individual liberty and free market transactions left within the ranks of Republicans just isn’t going to give them intellectual—philosophical—leverage against a clever bunch of egalitarians.
Tibor Machan holds the R.C. Hoiles Chair in Business Ethics & Free Enterprise at Chapman University’s Argyros School of B & E and is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford). To read more of Tibor’s essays, click on the Barely A Blog A-List category.
Tibor is just dead wrong on all points. First, the persistence of an overreaching, overregulating government does not in any way legitimize it’s continued existence in whole or part. You don’t justify an agency’s continued existence by its just being there. If anything, that becomes the kind of conservative argument liberals decry. It is like saying that federal regulation is a tradition, and should therefore be allowed to continue. What sense does that make to you liberals?
Instead, with philosophical principles intact, each agency should be measured by a new metric, a what-if metric, if you will. What would society be like if a particular set of regulations never existed? The fun you can have with shaping the assumptions would be a philosopher’s heaven! Cultural history, morals, ethics, even metaphysical arguments would have to be brought into resolve the many thorny issues raised by timid chicken-littles over doing with various government programs. My God, how did the nation EVER get along without a Dept. of Energy, or Education, or the EPA? My goodness. Some 200 years without those useless bodies where we became the most powerful nation on Earth also providing welfare to countless other nations, and now, there is no basis for eliminating them? Pretty lame, Tibor. Pretty lame.
The real battleground Dr. Machan might be alluding to is the Philosophy of Equality. These philosophical hegemons referred to might include racial quotas as a tool of “equality”. Now, there’s a philosophical tour de force conservatives can’t handle: Rank Hypocrisy.
Tibor, you need to go back and rethink this one.
Tibor’s assessment is absurd! Leaving aside the republican spending during the Bush years (yes they were wrong) what Constitutional basis is there for government control of healthcare? For goodness sake, when a government agency can control how many gallons of water my toilet is allowed to use to flush, then most Americans understand how wrong the path we are on. No matter how noble the cause, government should stay out of healthcare, as one look at the VA system points to the inability of lawyers running hospitals. When the November elections are over, Obama won’t have enough support to pass bubble gum for kids. Only a return to the founders ideals and constitutional law will save this country. America is bankrupt and only a cut in government spending and a return to a free market society will save us now. But to be fair I don’t believe the republicans can do much better, it will take the American people returning to principles of self sacrifice, personal responsibility, and good old-fashioned hard work to maintain the American dream.
Lecturing by a 47 year old President who cannot run a cash register at a 7/11 will not work.
Thanks for your blog and the ability to express myself.
Ask yourself why someone who fails to educate themselves, has three children before the age of 20 should have world class healthcare when they fail to prepare themselves to take care of everyday issues. Families need to look out for each other and quit expecting the government to provide for their every need.
[Hey; this is Tibor’s article, not mine. Not sure why the confusion. It’s good that the article has caused a reaction.–IM]
I cannot grasp the points raised in connection with my piece. If there is the perception that I have any sympathy at all for socialized medicine or even the FDA, you got me completely wrong. The point of my piece was something in political theory, namely, when one is in an argument it is a bad idea to abandon principle and, of course, Republicans have done so since a long time ago.
Absent a philosophical peg(leg) to stand on the Republicans might assume a penitent’s pose. But to sell it at this point will require a public admission in front of cameras with the attendant apology, properly and genuinely (practice, practice, practice) emoted.
Personally, I still wouldn’t buy it – not until each makes a pilgrimage, in sack cloth and ashes, to the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom.
Clearly some missed the point which was very well put. Republicans, over the years, have rationalized away many violations of what they claim to be their principles. A quick survey of the GOP finds nothing but lip service paid to antiquated ideas like: inviolable property rights and absolute freedom of association. They ignore the societal implications of fully recognizing these principles. Choosing with whom you will do business? That’s fine for a restaurant, but not for healthcare. We must help people.
A similar example, to help illustrate, might be: Republicans are equally unable to make a principled case against raising marginal tax rates to say 60%. After all, rates have been higher than that in the past. Moreover, when you agree that it is not immoral to seize a man’s property, then the rest is merely haggling over how much.
I too am unsure as to the ruckus over this article. Mr. Machan is simply stating that the Republican Party’s claim that it adheres to constitutional principles is watertight like a sieve. Their history betrays legitimate arguments for limited government, individual liberty, and respect for private property. It is a pot/kettle issue, plain and simple.
Republicans oppose expansion of the welfare state but only while Democrats are in charge.
Democrats oppose expansion of the warfare state but only while Republicans are in charge.
Uh, Ilana, I didn’t write the post above. Someone else shares my name or else perhaps there was a software glitch of some kind. [A different email, but same name.]
I believe Tibor is correct; he points out that most Republicans share the same underlying premises of the Democrats and are hypocrites. Basically, they have been boxed in by their logical inconsistency.
Whoever wrote using my name above didn’t get Tibor’s point, I think. But I wholeheartedly agree with whoever it was about Toilet Regulation.