Damn!!  On most days, I blog in hopes of raising questions and encouraging others to look under the rocks, read between the lines or examine the white space where they might discover the deeper meaning behind the news or societal behavior.  Don’t get me wrong.  It is something I enjoy doing.  But it is not always pleasurable. Yesterday,  I was actually having fun writing this blog.  And I hoped to have four more days of relatively minor chaos in Washington in order to complete Acts II-V of the MacTrump parody.  No such luck.

Let me explain.  The title of this post is not due to any on-going concern that a thin-skinned, narcissist might fumble the “nuclear football.”  In fact, today the target isn’t even Donald Trump.  The trigger for today’s post was introduction of the American Health Care Act aka RyanCare, the proposed replacement for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act aka ObamaCare.

I know.  I know.  As I’m writing these words, I can imagine one of my former students interrupting.  “Come on, Professor.  Aren’t you exaggerating just a bit?  Do you really believe we’re all going to die because of one congressional bill?” No, I don’t.  This is not about the physical demise of civilization.  It is about the philosophy embodied in the Republican health care proposal which turns its back on a major tenet of community life which has existed since the earliest days of mankind.

While I was still on the faculty at Miami University, I team taught a course in ethics.  On the first day of class my  colleague, a professor of business legal studies, would describe the origins of what one might call the “moral code” which governs society.  Before our primitive ancestors began to live collectively, it was the law of the jungle.  Everyone for themselves.  But as they created communities, they recognized the need for shared responsibility.  Even a cave person, observing an older member of the tribe in pain, inherently knew some day they too might suffer the same fate.   From which developed a pattern of behavior, not out of altruism, but necessity.  Jean-Jacques Rousseau described this ethical standard as “the social contract.”

Sadly, the RyanCare proposal does just the opposite.  Consider this one provision, the elimination of the individual mandate.  ObamaCare required all financially able Americans to contribute to the nation’s collective health.  They could do this by making sure they personally were covered or pay a penalty.  The penalty was actually a tax, the primary purpose of which was to teach individuals who did not think they needed insurance (i.e. the young and healthy) what the earliest homo sapiens understood eons ago.  Youth and good health are temporary conditions.

According to every analysis of the Republican plan, without the mandate, health care expenditures will increase for the most vulnerable (low income and the elderly).  While other provisions, such as elimination of the tax on passive income (capital gains, dividends and interest) for families with an income of $250,000 or more (i.e. the 0.1 percent), represents a major tax break for the wealthy.  Just what America needs.  Trickle-down health care.

I must admit, you have to appreciate the irony. The political party made up of individuals of whom 49 percent do not believe in evolution (Source: Public Policy Polling, February 2015) is promoting health care legislation based on the Darwinian principle of “survival of the fittest.”  They might as well have called the proposal, “The Jungle Health Care Act.”

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP