I Think I Need a Shoehorn

I’ve been very confused about some aspects of the health care “debate” recently.  Happily, Roy Zimmerman has explained it all in his latest newsletter:

I’ve been listening – really listening – to the good citizens who oppose health care reform, because I feel it would be easy to miss the subtlety of their reasoning amid the screaming and the booing and the finger-poking and the name-calling and the shoving and the cold-cocking and the Red-scaring and the race-bating. As I see it, their argument breaks down to seven well-considered points:

1. We can’t have a Public Option because options limit Freedom.
2. If we had a government-run health care plan, people would certainly choose it over their own plans because government can’t do anything right.
3. We need “tort reform,” whatever that is.
4. Socialism.
5. Private insurers have an obligation to stockholders and government does not, so government-run health care would concern itself with health, not with profit, and Adam Smith wouldn’t like that.
6. There’s no place for government in health care except when implanted in a woman’s womb.
7. Barack Obama is a Marxist Nazi.
8. And Black.

He forgot “Keep your government hands off my Medicare, you damn dirty ape!”, but otherwise that about sums it up.  Plus, someone can’t count, and I don’t think it’s Roy.

I hope that clarifies things.