The Inherent Immorality of Health Insurance (cont.)

A Media Matters video is making the rounds that demonstrates the absurd levels of dishonesty that some pundits are willing to go to to advance their ideological agenda.  In it, Bill O'Reilly claims to have found no evidence that his FOX co-workers ever promoted the idea that people will be jailed if they don't buy health insurance - even offering that they had "researched" the matter.  A long succession of clips are then shown of them saying exactly that, culminating with O'Reilly himself.  Crazily enough, O'Reilly is generally considered to be one of the more reasonable FOX pundits.



The really crazy thing, however, is how willing Americans are to go along with the idea that paying over $10,000 a year for health insurance (if you can get it) is something to be happy about. That's an absurd percentage of income - for a middle class family, it's over 10%!


If it were looked as a tax, the expenditure would not only be huge, but very regressive. People struggling to get by would be paying through the nose while those with higher incomes would pay a very small share.

The argument for a private system is of course that it offers higher quality care. From an outcomes standpoint that is irrefutably false. There may be some merit to claims it is more convenient. But that is debatable.
In the end, fighting to pay twice as much for similar care that (until the AHCA) millions were locked out of, and is horribly regressive in cost, is quite a pathetic portrait of ideological pathology.