The Pagan Claim On The Future

In the New York Review Of Books:
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2013/apr/02/new-american-sadism/

...[Mr.] Brill’s article makes one comprehend not just the talk in Washington about the supposed absolute necessity of replacing Medicare and Medicaid with “market-oriented” health care, but also the full human cost such a change would bring. 

If the elderly and the poor are stripped of the few protections these government programs give them, they’ll be left at the mercy of a medical industry and insurance companies whose already huge profits, so they imagine, will then get even bigger. 

Despite the claims that these are high-minded proposals that will fix our national debt, and despite their veneration as such by the political establishment and the media, what is being offered to the American people is nothing more than thinly-disguised money-making scams.

I am a capitalist. I was born at night, too, but not last night.
When health care companies speak to shareholders, do they emphasize the increase in the quality of care, or do they emphasize profits?

We all remember, I hope, the cheers that went up in the audience during the GOP’s presidential debate last spring in Tampa when Ron Paul, the libertarian candidate and former doctor, stated that he would let an uninsured man lying in a coma die without lifting a finger.

“That’s what freedom is all about, taking your own risk,” he said. “This whole idea that you have to compare and take care of everybody…” at which point, a few members of the audience shouted “Yeah,” cutting off the congressman in mid-sentence.

At that point, Mr. Paul and a number of other fellow Americans rejected and denied Christianity, and Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism, to boot.

There is a real chance that the future might belong to the Pagans.

--