Most interesting to me was this exchange between moderator Wolf Blitzer and candidate Rep. Ron Paul.
BLITZER: You're a physician, Ron Paul, so you're a doctor. You know something about [health care]. Let me ask you this hypothetical question.I'm by no means a rabid supporter of Ron Paul, but I believe that he got this answer exactly right. To explain why, first I need to draw the distinction -- as Paul did -- between government and society.
A healthy 30-year-old young man has a good job, makes a good living, but decides, you know what? I'm not going to spend $200 or $300 a month for health insurance because I'm healthy, I don't need it. But something terrible happens, all of a sudden he needs it.
Who's going to pay if he goes into a coma, for example? Who pays for that?
PAUL: Well, in a society that you accept welfarism and socialism, he expects the government to take care of him.
BLITZER: Well, what do you want?
PAUL: But what he should do is whatever he wants to do, and assume responsibility for himself. My advice to him would have a major medical policy, but not be forced --
BLITZER: But he doesn't have that. He doesn't have it, and he needs intensive care for six months. Who pays?
PAUL: That's what freedom is all about, taking your own risks. This whole idea that you have to prepare and take care of everybody --
BLITZER: But Congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?
PAUL: No. I practiced medicine before we had Medicaid, in the early 1960s, when I got out of medical school. I practiced at Santa Rosa Hospital in San Antonio, and the churches took care of them. We never turned anybody away from the hospitals.
And we've given up on this whole concept that we might take care of ourselves and assume responsibility for ourselves. Our neighbors, our friends, our churches would do it. This whole idea, that's the reason the cost is so high.
The cost is so high because they dump it on the government, it becomes a bureaucracy. It becomes special interests. It kowtows to the insurance companies and the drug companies, and then on top of that, you have the inflation. The inflation devalues the dollar, we have lack of competition.
There's no competition in medicine. Everybody is protected by licensing. And we should actually legalize alternative health care, allow people to practice what they want.
A government of, by and for The People has little interest and, in principle, no role in offering do-overs to some citizens at others' expense. Provisions for social welfare currently exist in law and official custom, and virtually all of us have been their beneficiaries, but now they're expected.
A society, in the form of individuals or communities, may choose to exercise compassion where a government should not. Charity should be the province of society -- "our neighbors, our friends, our churches" -- and not the business of government.
Laziness and complacency have transformed exceptions into crushing entitlements. At the core of the problem, as Paul correctly points out, is our collective failure to "take care of ourselves and assume responsibility for ourselves."
The Republican field is inarguably weak and Ron Paul, like the other candidates, has managed to screw the proverbial pooch in every debate. But the position he expressed last night is right on target, along with being refreshingly free of the dime-store populism that infects this GOP race.
