Am I the only one...

Who's pissed about Wolf Blitzer's phrasing of the health insurance question?

The reaction for the audience when he asked "Should society let him die?" was worthy of the outrage that it received, but personally I'm really pissed off that that question was even put in front of Ron Paul, a staunch libertarian.

First of all, the entire rhetorical machine of the GOP and libertarians alike is that in a free market, everyone will be able to purchase goods and services that best suit their needs and income brackets. As such, the way that they understand the current health insurance set up is that if you're an American, you choose which health insurance provider to use and that's that. Anyone without health insurance simply chooses not to have it.

This, of course, is an absurd assertion. Health insurance is almost prohibitively expensive and providers are notorious for finding reasons not to insure potential consumers. They usually point to 20-somethings as the prime example of their "you choose not to have access to healthcare" argument, because chances are very few young adults have pre-existing conditions that would disqualify them. And yet, a lot of 20-somethings go without. Why?

Because health insurance is really fucking expensive and we can't afford it, rent, clothing and food all at the same time.

So when Wolf Blitzer described a healthy man who simply chose NOT to have health insurance, he might as well have handed Ron Paul a free pass on this issue. If he had chosen a hypothetical situation that was closer to reality like "Citizen A can't afford health insurance because she works part time and cannot find a full time job, though not for lack of trying. Citizen A gets hurt at work, which doesn't provide health insurance since she isn't a full time employee. If she doesn't receive treatment at the hospital, she'll become either very sick or she will die. What do you, as a policy maker, do about that?"

It isn't a choice for a lot of Americans not to have health care. Why would we consciously decide that we preferred to be barred access to medical treatment? And why doesn't anyone bother asking these assholes that question when they've got them in front of an audience?

"There are risks with freedom," says Ron Paul. What he should have said was "Giving giant corporations unlimited freedoms puts many of our citizens at grave risk." Hell of a lot closer to the truth.