Why Does The Huffington Post Want Me Dead?

Get in line, HuffPo. I have co-workers at THE WEEKLY STANDARD who ask the same question every day…

But why this specific declaration for my demise? Ironically, health care.

I was talking about the then-Dead-Man-Walking GOP Obamacare repeal with Scott Simon—a broadcaster far too talented to be receiving taxpayer subsidies—when he threw in a good “college dorm” question: Is health care a right?

And I, being smart enough to understand why this was a dangerous question yet dumb enough to still answer it, told him “No.”

Overblown headlines ensued.

In the article, Dartmouth professor of English emeritus James Heffernan ponders what would happen if I were “hit by a truck as you’re crossing an intersection.”

“If you have freely chosen to be uninsured as well as to save no money and have thus exercised a right that is dear to all conservatives, why can’t all the rest of us just as freely choose to let you bleed to death right out there on the street?”

(For the record, bleeding to death after a horrific car wreck isn’t my preferred ticket punch. I’m more in the “fell into a vat while touring the Bushmill’s distillery and refused to swim” mode.)

Heffernan goes on to explain that a Reagan-era law requires emergency rooms to administer emergency medical care to people in a life-threatening emergency. I couldn’t find the vote count on Google, but I’m betting this bill got big, bipartisan majorities. A law demanding emergency rooms treat dying people is like a law requiring food banks to feed hungry people: redundant and unnecessary. At least, that’s what I—and most Americans, I’d be willing to bet—assume.

Not so at the HuffPo. Their assumption is that anything not mandated by government and/or funded by taxpayers doesn’t exist. It’s the premise of their complaints about the Trump budget cutting funding for Meals on Wheels, or PBS. “How will ‘Antiques Roadshow’ survive another season without tax dollars?” they wail.

Theirs is a disturbingly dark vision of America: A nation of people who, unless forced against their will, would let their neighbors to die in the streets.

It’s also wildly wrong. Like many libertarian-leaning conservatives, I believe in the free market because it brings the best care to the most people. I also know that my fellow Americans and I will rush to care for people truly in need, and we’ll do so without coercion. I know this because Americans already give around $375 billion a year to charity: 2015 was a record-breaking year for charitable donations. The previous record was set the year before.

Americans voluntarily give for everything from St. Jude’s Hospital helping young kids to, yes, Meals in Wheels—which feeds needy seniors using (mostly) donated funds.

Liberals push the false choice of “Government, or Death!” because they’re offering a lousy solution to health care (crappy, government-run care for all) that can’t compete with the quality or price of the free market, any more than the U.S. Post Office can compete with the internet.

No, letting people shop for the insurance of their choice—including no insurance—doesn’t mean letting sick people die. If that’s what you really want, there’s another law more to your liking:

Obamacare.

One of the key pillars of the Affordable Care Act is IPAB, the “Independent Payment Advisory Board.” Modeled on a British counterpart, IPAB’s job is control medical payments—deciding what treatments will and won’t be paid for. It’s modeled in a British board (with the creepily inappropriate acronym NICE) that gives a dollar amount to a patient’s life—and its quality—and then denies some people live-saving care because they’re not worth saving. If Granny’s hip replacement isn’t worth enough QALYs (Quality Adjusted Life Years) then maybe she is better off—as President Obama put it so eloquently in 2009– “taking a painkiller.”

You may know IPAB better as the “death panel.”

Now, before you tell me you can see Sarah Palin from your ER, here’s what Obama administration honcho and Obamacare cheerleader Steven Rattner had to say in 2012:

Obama’s budget director Peter Orszag and Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber (among many others) also argued in favor of IPAB and rationing.

Free-market “liberals” (small-L ones like me) believe competition, innovation and choice will make government-imposed rationing unnecessary as costs fall and quality rises. Supporters of nationalized health care a la Britain and Canada build their medical system’s economics on denying care.

And I’m the one who wants to “leave people in the streets to die?”

But don’t worry Professor Heffernan: if Obamacare ever turns you down, I’ll be happy to hold pledge week to raise money on your behalf.