So for those that missed it, there is currently a guy running for President under the Republican banner that would rather sit and watch his fellow citizens die than have a government set up by, for, and of the people do anything about it. His position is that, without the dang gubmint getting in the way, private charity will pick up the slack.
This is not only something Ron Paul just says, he really and truly believes this crap. Truly….
At CNN’s Tea Party-indulging debateon Monday, Ron Paul, a medical doctor, faced a pointed line of questioning from Wolf Blitzer regarding the case of an uninsured young man who suddenly found himself in dire need of intensive health care.
Should the state pay his bills? Paul responded, “That’s what freedom is all about: taking your own risks. This whole idea that you have to take care of everybody—”
He never quite finished that point, letting the audience’s loud applause finish it for him. So Blitzer pressed on, asking if he meant that “society should just let him die,” which earned a chilling round of approving hoots from the crowd. Paul would not concede that much outright, instead responding with a personal anecdote, the upshot being that in such a case, it was up to churches to care for the dying young man. So basically, yeah. He’d let him die.
As it turns out, Paul was not speaking purely in hypotheticals. Back in 2008, Kent Snyder — Paul’s former campaign chairman — died of complications from pneumonia. Like the man in Blitzer’s example, the 49-year-old Snyder (pictured) was relatively young and seemingly healthy* when the illness struck. He was also uninsured. When he died on June 26, 2008, two weeks after Paul withdrew his first bid for the presidency, his hospital costs amounted to $400,000. The bill was handed to Snyder’s surviving mother (pictured, left), who was incapable of paying. Friends launched a website to solicit donations.
It’s actually this last bit I want to talk about. One of the things that Ron Paul said would alleviate these issues, absent any sort of government rules or regulations, are private charities. In this case we have $400,000 in bills racked up without insurance…and so a fundraising drive was started to cover these. According to Ron Paul, this should work out fine.
Even for someone intimately connected to the power brokers at the top of the food chain, even after paying the ultimate Libertarian price, Ron Paul’s ideas don’t work.
Now try and apply those same ideas to everyone….and you see that they work even less.
Robot Pirate Ninja 