The Daily Background

“I’ll be darned if I’m going to concede that Democrats care more about poor people than we do.”

– Rudy Giuliani, after slamming Democrats’ plan to offer healthcare for all Americans, regardless of economic status.

Remind me how not wanting to give all Americans health insurance is caring more about the poor than wanting to give all Americans health insurance.

The above-linked article continues, describing Giuliani’s distaste for universal health care: “The former New York City mayor, responding to comments in the first Democratic primary debate Thursday night, claimed Democrats favor “mandatory” universal health care and the plans would only exacerbate the cost of care by putting the system in the hands of bureaucrats.”

You’ll recall the Giuliani approach to healthcare: people who don’t have health care coverage must not want it. He offered his thoughts on the matter in early April–

“I don’t like mandating health care. I don’t like it because it erodes what makes health care work in this country–the free market, the profit motive. A mandate takes choice away from people. We’ve got to let people make choices. We’ve got to let them take the risk–do they want to be covered? Do they want health insurance? Because ultimately, if they don’t, well, then, they may not be taken care of. I suppose that’s difficult.”

The language Giuliani uses in reference to health care is just plain weird. “Mandatory” health care? As a bad thing? The way he talks about it, you’d think he was talking about mandatory IRS audits for everyone age 6 and up. Honestly, it’s like he thinks having adequate health care is some sort of lifestyle choice, a matter of preference, something that suits some people, but not others.

It’s truly bizarre, and I can’t figure out if he’s actually convinced that not all Americans want good quality health care coverage, or whether he’s just paying lip service to the “conservative ideal of choice,” and no government regulation.

But who doesn’t want health care? Who wants to pay absurd amounts to pharmaceutical corporations in order to get the prescriptions they need to be healthy? Who wants to be able to choose to be vulnerable by not having any health care?

Who wants to go bankrupt due to a lack of adequate health insurance, like half of all personal bankruptcies occur now? I guess Rudy thinks there are some people out there crazy enough to want just that. And he wants nothing more than for them to get what he thinks they want: no health care coverage.

Filed under: Z-TDB Blog