Rep. Zach Wamp (TN-R) on the Right – Way Right – to Health Care

“Listen, health care a privilege…For some people it’s a right, but for everyone, frankly, it’s not necessarily a right…” The topic: President Obama’s health care agenda. The Congressloon: Zach Wambat, er, I mean, Zach WAMP (TN-R) (drop him a line). Watch the video first, then we’ll talk. Have a seat, and put a pillow on the table in front of you in case you should pass out. Also, if you don’t pass out, to avoid your head exploding, wear a tight baseball cap.

There. Are you O.K.? Do you need a few more moments to reacquaint yourself with your surroundings? If so, I understand. You’ve been “Wamped” . . . Have a little glass tea, or a stiff snort. Yes, he really did say those things. No, it wasn’t a nightmare. Well, actually it was. We all did. How is this man in the United States Congress? How is he permitted outside his home?

One of his constituents, Katie Allison Granju of Knoxnews.com wrote that Wamp, “made (Louisiana GOP Governor) Bobby Jindal look good.” Actually, Jindal, and even Congressloon Steven King (R-IA), look Einsteinian in comparison. Nashville Scene called Wamp the “Crazy Southern Goober of the day,” suggesting that “if you’re looking for a breathtaking exercise in denial and unrepentant gooberism, Wamp puts on a stellar show.” Well, don’t tell the GADL (Goober Anti-Defamation League) – Wamp’s actually an insult to decent Goobers everywhere – but that isn’t the question here.

It’s a Question of the Ideology of the Heart. And it’s pretty clear that Mr. Wamp’s feelings about the “privilege” of health care won’t win him a Gandhi Award anytime soon. The sad fact is that these beliefs are shared by the majority of what remains of the Republican party, the Blue Dog Democrats (the GOP branch of the Democratic party), and what remains of the DLC (the Democratic Leadership Council or, as Jesse Jackson labeled it, the”Democrats for the Leisure Class”). Throw in some libertarians and you’ll still come up somewhat short of one fully beating human heart.

The “facts” that Wamp and his ilk throw out are unsupported by any analysis. On this point I’m going to do something I hate to see others do: I’m not going to “dignify Wamp’s mendacity with a response.” O.K., I will, but just a few:

– Of the 45 million who are completely uninsured, 78.8% work full or part-time, i.e. those hard working folk Wamp seems to think simply do not want the health insurance so thoughtfully offered by their employers. These workers are in the lowest economic strata and simply cannot afford the health insurance offered . . .

– and, 64 percent of American workers who are uninsured are not even offered an employer-sponsored health care plan (eshp). And, the reality is, contrary to Wamp’s excitation on this, the vast majority do take advantage of eshp’s when they are offered them.

– A full third of Americans live without health care for at least part of the year. Prior to the stimulus plan’s reductions in cost (which the GOP fought), COBRA was very expensive, and many people who were laid off and between jobs didn’t work for companies large enough to be required to provide COBRA.

Enough with the facts. The Henry J. Kaiser Foundation has a virtual encyclopedia of easily accessed and helpfully organized information, for example, check here and here (this one may take a little time to download, but it’s well worth the wait).

It’s A Question of the Heart. It’s not about economics. But for the hell of it, let’s assume it is. We CAN afford to insure the right of all Americans to healthcare; we cannot afford not to. With a national single payer healthcare program (though not presently in the cards in the President’s plan) we will SAVE money. As our national health improves when ALL are included and none refused we will dramatically increase our prosperity by all measures, GDP, student test scores and achievement, productivity, infant mortality rate, and otherwise. If people like Wamp were truthful, they actually KNOW this. It’s not about the economics of cost. It never has been. We waste enormous resources with our present system of mismanaged care, it even compromises the healthcare workers it exists for; listen to doctors and hospital administrators today, you’ll not hear the same chorus of naysaying about health care reforms that you did in the 1960’s. It’s not about money. Period.

It’s also not about the question of “rights.” The radical GOP (that’s all that’s left) and others, particularly libertarians, speak of healthcare as a “positive” right, i.e. a right that is not, they would say, “God given” and therefore inalienable, such as free speech, freedom of assembly, rights of private property, etc. These others, they say, are true rights because they are rights that prevent something; for example, they prevent the state from interfering with them. They do not require anyone to do anything.

People like Wamp believe that so-called “positive” rights, like a right to health care are not true rights because they oblige others to do something they do not necessarily want to do. Mind you, they don’t ever adequately explain how the rights they revere are truly “rights,” they simply state that they are. They don’t set out any particularly prima facie proofs other than the overriding principle of self-interest, and then it’s often the particularly ruthless self-interest principle espoused by Ayn Rand – the right to take without restraint, the right to greed. They build a system of human and societal “rights” upon this foundation?

Sadly, yes. But their rights distinction is vapid. If, for example, one has an inalienable right to bear arms, then the state is obliged to defend that right. The state is also obliged to defend intrusions on all other rights that they claim, like the right to private property. The real crazies, and I’d guess Wamp to be among them, would counter by asserting that the state doesn’t have any real a priori purpose; instead, rights are to be defended by individuals alone or by private market means, like Rent-A-Cop. Well, you can see, one can go around and around this issue and avoid noticing that we live in a real world where cooperation is essential to our survival, even though it is consistently and brutally interfered with by those who simply want to claim their “inherent right,” their “inalienable right,” to help no one but themselves, while they snidely argue away all instances where they benefit from innumerable kinds of state “interference,” like police protection, bailouts, sole source contracts, and subsidies. Theirs is not a system of human rights. It’s simply wrong.

So, it’s not really about rights. Because of the interference of the GOP and other pseudo-libertarians, a positive “right” to health care will exist only through the good, old-fashioned social compact. We, the people, must cause it to happen, through legislation, or constitutional amendment. Moreover, it must be financed in a progressive way, via tax policy, because the wealthy, who make up a disproportionate number of the “leave me alone” rights crowd, will not do so voluntarily. The social compact is messy. President Obama will have a hell of a time outgunning them. The opposition will use all their rhetorical weapons to convince the majority of Americans they will suffer more than they already do under what they’ll mendaciously label a “socialist” or “totalitarian” health care system, even though the facts and demographics are clearly contrary.

It’s a Conviction of the Heart. In 1997, around the time of the SCHIP funding crisis, Joe Conason of the NY Observer summed it up, “Let us not hear again from these creeps about ‘family values’ or ‘compassionate conservatism.’ Such is the devolution of conservatism in our time—from a philosophy concerned with overweening state authority to a movement that bullies children in the name of freedom,” or of “rights.”

And note, Mr. Wamp, as just reported, Tennessee’s January 2009 unemployment rate hit a 23 year high at 9.8%. Meanwhile their Democratic wingnut Governor, Phil Bredesen, is making rude noises that he may very well turn down the federal stimulus plan funds intended to bolster unemployment insurance. That should certainly help the healthcare fairness situation in the state.

Wamp, quite literally, does not – could not – care much about his own constituents. Many are in the poorest regions of the country, and unemployment will rise further. It’s a question of the heart. Mr. Wamp’s heart, and “conservatism’s” heart. He and his fellow travelers need to spend a day in an Tennessee emergency room. Or in a Tennessee homeless shelter. Or in a medically underserved Tennessee rural county. Test the heart.

For now, logic and facts fail to convince them. It’s about the heart, really. The conviction of the heart. And Mr. Wamp’s heart – and the heart of the GOP – stands convicted.

Please follow and like us: