I have heard that Obamacare would be the most redistributionist federal program since…since what, I’m not too sure. But one does not hear, not very often, that opposition to the plan, from whatever quarter, is based upon opposition to economic redistribution. One could say that this motive is implicit in much of what one does hear. The insured are generally happy and outnumber the uninsured. There is therefore no great political impetus for reform at the popular level. I would nevertheless have thought that there would be more discussion of the redistributionist aspect of health-care reform and of the extent to which unhappiness about income redistribution motivates opposition to reform.
Healthcare reform, a question
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ledocs,
this recent article touched on some of these themes
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/can-republicans-govern
Nikki, I read most of this article, although I found it to be quite uninteresting, a boiler-plate rehash of tired complaints. I hope this article is not representative of what “The Weekly Standard” publishes. And what I did not see in it, anywhere, was an explicit complaint about the redistributive nature of the health care reform bills. The article restricts itself to opposing the intrusion of government.
The question you raise, ledocs, is the elephant in the room, isn’t it? The politicos and media have so successfully demonized anything that sounds even faintly “socialist” (I’m surprised that “social” as in “social media” or “social entrepeneur” still survives) that no one has the courage to raise this question, which is to me a question of justice.