Can the Moral ‘Narrative’ of ObamaCare Be Defeated?

“President Obama has finally demanded an “up or down vote” on his health care plan. Republicans have already raised numerous economic and procedural objections, arguing that his plan relies on economic “smoke and mirrors” and that the president is now endorsing the same controversial “reconciliation” process that he denounced in 2005 as a senator as “the wrong place for policy changes.” Yet the president and his supporters remain committed to their goal of government-run “universal health care.” Why is that?

The key is Obama’s declaration, “I don’t know how this plays politically, but I know it’s right.” Ultimately, Obama and his liberal base believe that government-guaranteed health care is a “moral imperative” — i.e., “it’s right.” And that will also be the key to defeating it.

As Leonard Peikoff once wrote, “So long as people believe that socialized medicine is a noble plan, there is no way to fight it. You cannot stop a noble plan — not if it really is noble. The only way you can defeat it is to unmask it — to show that it is the very opposite of noble. Then at least you have a fighting chance.”

…If we violate those principles in a vain attempt to guarantee “universal health care,” we will violate the moral principle that each man is entitled to the fruits of his labor, instead enslaving each man to pay for his neighbor’s medical care. We will destroy the prosperity and innovation that make modern medicine possible. We will give the government control over how doctors may practice, and which treatments patients may or may not receive. Our lives will no longer be ours, but rather the government’s. The end result will be, in Leonard Peikoff’s words, “the very opposite of noble.”

Benjamin Franklin once said, “They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.” Let us not ignobly enslave ourselves for an illusion of “guaranteed health care.” We’ll have neither freedom nor health care — and we’ll deserve neither.

Paul Hsieh, MD, practices in the south Denver metro area. He is co-founder of Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine (MD).