There has been a shift in both the reality and the perception of conservatives in America – it’s come to mean military jingo-ism and being a cultural busybody – but to old school people it just means some things are too important to experiment with. Society generally agrees with this concept – the courts frown on undernourished children, including one who died, whose kooky parents kept them on a vegan diet(1) – but it is a local standard. For example, kooky Seattle progressives whose special snowflakes are too important to get vaccines are incredibly conservative about their children’s health and only want vaccines for other kids so theirs can benefit from the herd immunity.
Generally, the vast majority of people believe if there is risk, it should be factored into a policy before a decision is made – people are slightly conservative depending on the amount it will directly benefit them. Now, I don’t mean people who take the precautionary principle to extremes, like conservatives who insist nothing should be done about global warming because it might make yachts more expensive or progressives who call precisely engineered wheat ‘Frankenfood’ while they endorse completely natural strychnine on their fruit, I mean just generally wanting to have a confidence level before government tells them what to do.
The media need to be trusted guides on complex issues like that. The Associated Press claims to be a trusted name in journalism. What do we do when a journalist’s zeal for nationalized health care makes them slant a story so far they can’t be trusted? Who will the public turn to? Check out this quote from the AP’s Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar on health care and why it needs to cover birth control pills.
Research links closely spaced births to a risk of such problems as prematurity, low birth weight, even autism.
What??? At least it isn’t vaccines, but it’s a lack of birth control? Call the NIH, quick!
The majority of people were concerned about health care legislation because they were worried about being deceived; despite claims to the contrary, they feared, they would be penalized if they didn’t buy health care they couldn’t afford. That turned out to be true, thus the reason the so-called ObamaCare is hopelessly tied up in court.
If that isn’t enough to convince people something is wrong with the legislation, we’re now getting scare-mongering by a journalist who references an unnamed source with as much legitimacy as the partisan slackjaws who claimed Fukushima radiation was killing babies in the western US only a few weeks after the reactor shut down. (2)
Birth control only costs $9 a month yet an Institute of Medicine committee is insisting that if women have to pay anything at all, they won’t use it, and that is why 50% of pregnancies are unplanned. And if you don’t agree and worry that adding even more optional services will make the cost unsustainable, well, do you want kids to get autism? Because an AP reporter implies kids will get autism if moms don’t get free birth control pills.
A national health care program should cover the essentials, certainly – it keeps costs low enough to be manageable and saves money in the long run, if the numbers add up. But if every committee of advocates gets to stuff their pet beliefs into the program, and everything is covered, then the costs will be outrageous.
Then again, while I am not old enough yet to need Viagra, why should I have to pay when I do? A few studies claim mothers have detrimental psychological effects from having unprotected sex and getting pregnant but every man in the world can attest to the positive psychological benefits of getting more sex.
Maybe the Institute of Medicine needs to put me on that committee.
NOTES:
(1) Though advocates even in medicine will embrace alternative weirdness, with one claim being that the 5 malnourished children, including one who died, were ‘small’ because of an inherited defect and the analysis by psychologists that they suffered mental development delays was ‘question’ despite any of them having any credentials in psychology at all.
(2) Basically, if you want to find an anti-science hippie, go to a Whole Foods in Seattle.