The Health Care Debate Is About Values [View all]

[PsychoBabble]

At its best, that's what government is. We can't build our own roads, so we pool our resources to build them together. Same with schools, public safety, national defense. We invest in science and arts as a society because they are investments in our own humanity.

Why not do the same with health care? We literally can't live without it. So why shouldn't it be a responsibility for us as a society to see people get the health care they need?

The ACA didn't get us there. But those were the values behind the effort: a shared responsibility to ensure people had decent health care coverage. The individual mandate wasn't just the necessary keystone that held the system in place; it was also a symbol of that shared responsibility.

The Republican proposal, the AHCA, represents exactly the opposite values. Instead of distributing responsibility to ensure coverage to as many people as possible, it would rob millions of care. It would shrink spending on Medicaid. Cut subsidies and raise rates on seniors. Take away rules that make insurance more effective. And it would put the entire individual insurance market at risk of collapse by keeping the popular parts of Obamacare – like requiring companies to cover people with preexisting conditions – while eliminating the individual mandate, which made those provisions possible.

Conservatives are always yelling about not compromising their values ... neither should we.