Eric Cantor made an appalling admission when he spoke recently to the College of American Pathologists. After decrying – yet again – the health care reform that was passed by Congress, Cantor then admitted that the insurance companies he loves so much ration care based on their desire for profits and the income and health status of potential customers.
Cantor railed against what he said will inevitably be future government rationing of health care because of increasing cost, yet at the same time he admitted, “I think that the fundamental nature of our system of third-party payer is the problem,” that insurance companies ration that care right now, based on a person’s income.
So, what is his “magic” solution for this serious dilemma? It’s more of the same horror that got us into a situation where 50 million or more Americans don’t have access to the health care they need…the private, for-profit insurance industry. To Cantor, rationings of health care can be cured by having more “competition” among insurers. That’s absurd on its face. The situation now is that no for-profit insurer is going to give a policy to old, sick people. After all, that’s why Medicare came into existence in the first place. And, are they going to go after a “market” of poor, sickly American citizens? Hardly. After the elderly, the next largest group of chronically ill people are the poor and the unemployed.
What Cantor is advocating is that the United States remain a nation where income and class status determine one’s life span and quality of health care. As he himself put it, “We’re not for everyone having the same outcome guaranteed.”
That’s the Republican philosophy in a nutshell, though they don’t usually slip up and state it as openly as Cantor. They are Social Darwinists who believe that those who have money are more deserving that those without it, that the poor and sick somehow deserve their fate and lifting them up will weaken the “deserving rich.”
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