When Stephen Chapman addressed the national health insurance question earlier in December, I shrugged it off, thinking he was just another conservative ideologue in love with everything only the purest forms capitalism can deliver. But his column later that month (Dec. 22) enraged me. Chapman feels somehow vindicated in his viewpoint when pointing out obvious flaws in government-controlled care systems such as in Germany or Canada. Fact is, there are few tasks beyond gross propagation that man seems capable of performing flawlessly, so there are going to be problems. But is that any reason not to try?
We need to study these systems closely, to make a good thing better. But then, Chapman doesn`t see health care for everyone-especially the riff-raff underclass who can`t afford it-as a good thing.
He would have the government fix broken bridges, broken streets, broken banks and billion-dollar corporations, but never the broken bodies of a desperate middle-class he helped to destroy. When a man holds dear too many inanimate things, his heart is apt to become one of them.
