Not relishing confrontation, I parried the liberal’s thrust with
humor. When he asserted that “you conservatives lie through your
teeth,” I just grinned amiably and asked: “What are you, a
dentist?”
No need for my kind to be on the defensive right about
now. Our remade country has basted in hope and change until
thoroughly pickled. Ben Franklin told us how to be healthy,
wealthy, and wise; our new leaders have made us healthy, poor, and
stupid. Or, pace Hobbes, our lives are now solitary, poor, brutish,
nasty, and long. Our health is insured but our wealth is
expropriated. Citizens are none too pleased about these
developments, and with their cognac confiscated, they have taken to
sipping tea in a menacing way. If the liberals running the joint
have any aces up their sleeves, now would be a good time to loosen
their cufflinks.
Yet these times still call for conservatives to be on the
alert. The short-term opportunities may seem easy enough, falling
into their lap as luxury. But there are longer-term opportunities
out there for those whose eyes are open. This is true because the
left, in their tempo as fugitives, will drop little confessions in
their wake. When they are winning, they are careful to disguise
their motives and their motifs. When losing, as now, they scramble
and squirm and squeal. Like the suspect in the police station
before the lawyer arrives, this is their rare moment to blurt. The
good detective must pounce.
A fantastic example of this came in the debate between the
Latter Day Saint of Nevada, Harry Reid, and the Queen of Heartland,
Sharron Angle. Angle said: “What we have is a choice between the
free market… America is about choices… Let the people decide where
they want to buy their insurance.” Reid responded: “Insurance
companies don’t do it out of the goodness of their hearts. All they
care about is profit… We need to force them to do mammograms… this
will improve our health… by catching the cancers early we save a
lot of money…”
Here we have a series of spectacular revelations about the
assumptions prevalent among the cognoscenti. Suddenly they have
admitted us into their premises, and we see what is Left out in the
sun. In these few lines we learn the following:
1. The people cannot choose properly. If left
to wing it, they will not wing it right. Two more dollars for the
insurance company, tumor dolors for the policyholder. The suckers
who are born every minute will be left to die any
second.
2. There is no conceivable reason why
companies might do the right thing except goodness, and that is
unlikely. The idea that they may equate good service with sound
business practice is rejected. The only language these companies
know is Mammon
grammar.
3. Companies will choose profit over saving
the lives of the people who are paying the premiums. They do not
care that the patient who waits too patiently for a surgery may
soon be the subject of a lovely wreath of impatiens.
4. Nor can they do the simple mathematical
equation that says there is no profit without customers, and a dead
customer is always right in the same spot. You can check the sign
over his grave, but you can’t get him to sign a check.
5. Harry Reid and his Congressional cohort
can figure out that mammograms save money in the long run, yet the
profit-hungry company cannot compute this profit-inducing calculus.
They are not only greedy, they are not only stupid, but they are
even stupid enough to cheat their own greed.
The truth is the exact opposite. The insurance company is
the only instrument in the system today working to save money.
Patients no longer negotiate with doctors; the government
negotiates but overlooks too much and oversees too little. There is
no greater proof that mammograms do not save money over time than
the fact that insurance companies do not require they be
taken.
But Harry is right about the general principle. Preventive
measures can save people money. They can save people from cancers
eating them up inside. I recommend all citizens of this great
country take just such measures on November 2.
