By Bill
Droel
“Your sad story doesn’t
obligate me or anybody else to pay for somebody else’s health care,” says a
former Congressman from Illinois. He has apparently forgotten the definition of
insurance (a hedge or cushion against
risk), which is normally achieved by spreading the cost of a problem (a car
accident, a fire, a surgery) among a more-or-less random pool of people. More
importantly, this former legislator (now a radio commentator) and many others
like him have forgotten a crucial part of moral philosophy.
Our
United States culture prizes liberty. It is a marvel the way our country’s
founders and its citizens to this day have woven liberty into our laws, our civic
affairs, our business practices, our expressions of faith and more. This is
something new in the long history of civilization. We correctly invoke the
virtue of liberty or freedom at sports events, in schools, in discussions of
military deployment, in TV commercials, in policy debates and more. Frequently,
however, we forget that liberty is a social virtue and that it is part of a
constellation of other virtues. Instead, we too often equate liberty with
ragged individualism.
Individualism
is now the default position of our culture. It says that goodness is achieved
when at the end of the day (or the end of the financial quarter or fiscal year)
the greatest number of people gets the best results possible. The mechanism is
individual choice. The maximum number of choices, says individualism, will
somehow yield maximum benefits—though not for all people, but for the most
people. This is a philosophy for lazy thinkers. It reduces liberty or freedom
to choices or options. Should we install a dish or connect with cable? Should
we marry or simply live together? Should we help one another with health
insurance or allocate for our own family exclusively?
Individual
liberty is an achievement, but individualism, particularly as currently
presented by some ideologues in our society, is destructive. Yes to communitarian
individuals; no to extreme individualism.
The
principle of the common good recognizes that many important things cannot be
obtained by individuals. Many good things can only be obtained in common:
public safety, effective fire-fighting in urban areas, roads and airports, libraries
(including all cyber-research), clean water and access to health care. No
matter how wealthy the former Congressman might be, he cannot have all these
good things unless he cooperates. In fact, many people never use an airport but
their taxes subsidize the airport that the Congressman uses. Many never go to
college, but taxpayers underwrote his education. His tuition did not fully
cover the costs of running those schools.
The
common good, which was always part of the United States experiment in
democracy, complements the so-called free market and in fact it makes the
market better. The common good is not reducible to the sum total of individual
choices. It imposes considerations on those who are expressing an opinion and
acting on a calculated choice. If we forget about the common good, we sooner or
later lose society.
Of
course, the common good does not give wholesale endorsement to the Affordable
Care Act. It does not endorse Trump/Ryan Care. Reasonable citizens can reasonably
differ about the delivery of health care. In fact, the common good does not
even necessitate a health insurance system. Theoretically, normal health care (the
requirement of the common good principle) could be inexpensively available to
all if pharmaceutical executives, doctors, hospital administrators and others
were paid the same wage as their patients.
The
former Illinois Congressman, who lists himself as a Catholic, puts the matter
of health care delivery under the virtue of compassion. “It is compassion for
me to voluntarily help someone else,” he says. It is not a virtue for the
government “to forcibly take the money I make.”
Here again,
he and many others don’t realize that compassion or love is a commandment or a requirement.
It is not merely optional. Likewise, he forgets to put compassion into the
constellation of social virtues. For example, distributive justice is the virtue
that obligates an authority, like the government, to allocate resources so that
all have the common goods.
Extreme
individualism is bad for our culture, bad for business, bad for United States
image abroad and bad for legitimate debate about government meddling in health
care, about tax incentives for domestic job creation, about improvements in
education outcomes, about women’s reproductive health, about enforcing the
civil rights of gays and lesbians, about reform inside civil service unions,
about extraction and use of domestic natural resources. Extreme libertarians on
the right and on the left are hurting our society.
From its
earliest days, visitors to our country have been impressed with our teamwork,
our sense of community, our voluntary associations, our inclusiveness and our
collective dedication to the common good. We prosper and pursue our happiness
to the extent that we pull together and that we refute mindless comments about
“my own health care.”
Droel edits INITIATIVES
(PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629), a print newsletter about faith and work.
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