Tweet
An Open Letter To The President From An Über Randian: "I Don’t Deserve Health Care; All My Ailments Are My Fault"
Dear Mr President,
I’m writing you because I think you’re wasting time on this Health Care/Insurance Reform push. Real Americans don’t want to be coddled. Real Americans pull themselves up by their bootstraps; and if they have an injury that prevents them from pulling themselves up, they have no one to blame but themselves.
I know, because I read it in an Ayn Rand book once. The Medical Insurance Industrial Complex must have a right to refusal, in fact, being the Randian moralist that I am, I will preempt any refusal by an insurance company by denying myself any medical help. All of my conditions are pre-existing; they are all my fault and I don’t deserve health care.
One might hold, Mr President, that simply being born makes all of our conditions "pre-existing," and they would be correct. But I would maintain that personal responsibility is a purer gauge of a citizen than simply being born. My Randian mates made sure I understood that at an early age.
It was my choice to don my Superman cape at the age of four and "fly" into the doorframe of our house; took six stitches for that one. It was my choice to play high school football where I sustained a half dozen concussions, four knee surgeries and a shoulder reconstruction; I mean, my coaches always yelled that we had to give our body to the team, playing hurt is what makes me a Real American.
It was my choice to work for a major oil company and was gassed by H2S; occupational hazard, you know.
It was all my choice, Mr President and therefore, all my fault.
I don’t deserve health care, Mr President. One of my friends is a Randian and an insurance actuary. He says that the risk is too great for insurance to cover me and I agree. Empathy is putting oneself in another’s shoes. It’s important for the little guy to put themselves in The Medical Insurance Industrial Complex’s shoes; then he would know how difficult it is to provide a service and still make a profit.
I’ve done that, Mr President. It would be wrong for me to seek health care; and since it’s wrong for me, and being a Real American and a Randian; it’s wrong for anyone else, as well.
Stop this push for Health Care Reform, Mr President. Real Americans just rub some mud on the cut and keep working.
Only pansies and fair-weather boys want health care.
Yours truly,
Randy Rand Doorunrun
© 2009 by Justice Putnam
and Mechanisches-Strophe Verlagswesen
14 Comments
This of course, is satire. Being a testosterone-addled, broken down athlete, a father and grandparent, I realize I got over my school-girl crush on Ayn Rand when I was in, oh, sixth-grade!
A very cute girlfriend I had advised me to read Atlas Shrugged. When I was halfway through the book I dropped it and the girl. I was, however, thinking of bumper stickers. How about these?
I don’t need no stinkin’ health care.
Vote for Joe Barton.
More War, Less Medicine
Vote for Joe Barton
If God wanted us to have healthcare
he would not have created Republicans
Vote for Joe Barton
Silly citizens, Health care is for congress.
Vote for Joe Barton
Want Health Care?
Live in France
Vote for Joe Barton.
Those are great!
Yes, justice, we SHOULD pay for the health care of all those people who eat trashy junk food, never exercise, smoke and all the other things they KNOW they shouldn’t do.
But, please, I’d like YOU to pay for it first. Once you have paid your fair share–maybe a 5% tax surcharge, then, I’ll be happy to pay mine.
Please don’t get mad at that conservative who calls you some kind of racist or homophobic name. It’s not his fault. He’s not responsible. We all, both liberal and conservative, just can’t help ourselves, and we need someone else to take care of us. Please come take care of me, I can’t do it myself.
Let me see, who can I blame? Dammit, get that mirror out of here!!
I’m looking at the man in the mirror
I am hoping someone else can change their ways
I know, It just can’t get any clearer
If you want to make the world a better place
Then find somebody else
And place that….blame.
Why is it that health care is considered to be a hand-out? Plus, and I hope you are being snarky, why is it that opponents of health care reform always bring up the god awful burden of paying, even incrementally, for the drunk/drug addled, fast food eating, supine fool who should have known better?
I see health care reform to include children of the hard working poor, for those with sports injuries from high school that prevents them from getting insurance.
I have never had any problem paying my fair share, whether I “paid first” or no; but if you want to be gouged by your insurance company, that’s fine. I just don’t want to be gouged by your insurance company. I believe that government CAN work, the repug tea party makes sure government will never work so it will become their self-fulfilling prophesy.
Getting health care is not blaming someone else for the injury or disease, but simply getting treatment for that injury or disease.
Only the most vile Randian would advocate dening care to one because of the mistakes of their life or the station they were born into. Only the most vile Randian thinks there are the deserving and the undeserved.
It a hand out because other have to work to make the service. Yes, if it was sitting on the ground, laying all over the place, just appeared, then it wouldn’t be a hand out if given free.
But, the reality is the someone has to get up, get dressed, drive down to the office or hospital and put in the time. Someone has to pay for it. Now, if you want to pay for Joe Blow for his health care, certainly, you are welcome to do it. But, YOU pay for it before asking someone else to pay.
Supporting drunks, smokers, non exercisers and others who basically have chosen to ruin themselves is akin to paying for the auto insurance of those who can’t get insurance because they had too many accidents or too many drunk driving tickets.
When you reward indolence, you get indolence.
Those Eastern Bloc countries didn’t fail for no reason.
You can believe that when you let go of the lead weight it won’t drop to the ground all you want. But, it will drop anyway.
There are other ways to handle health care problems. Portability, costs, the poor; it can all be handled without a big government take over.
The more someone blames someone else for their condition (meaning ability to pay, get along, survive), good or bad, the less power they have. And, the more they will not get out of the condition if bad.
Ok, I get it, you’re better than the rest of us; but wait until you get sick or injured and that acne you had as a kid keeps you from the treatment you hoped you would get from all those premium payments you made; then we’ll see if your Randian “morality” holds up.
You think this all about “lifestyle” choices and “Big Government” advocating indolence. You think this all can be synthesized down to a bunch of losers who don’t deserve even to live.
I see it as my family burdened by a corrupt corporate profit driven fraud stealing money from me and my own.
You obviously see government as something feared, I do not.
So go Galt and leave the rest of this to those who are willing to work and pay so that all of us might enjoy the fruits of “providing for the general welfare.”
Just GO! The rest of us have work to do; oh, and I would hope you would refuse to drive on that Big Government highway to your Galt Paradise, I would hope you have the decency to not even drive the car that was made safe by Big Government regulations.
In fact, you need to stop drinking water, stop taking medication, stop buying meat, vegetables, dairy and the containers they come in made safe by Big Government regulations.
Go Galt and leave the work to those you look so unkindly upon. We don’t even want your money.
Just stop reaping the benefits we have worked so hard for that you would deny to others.
While you at it, you must refuse the Police and Fire Protection that the Big Bad Gov’t provides. Don’t count on that Gov’t sponsored Military either.
When you fly, you must not use the FAA or the Air Traffic Controllers to help or guide you, can’t have gov’t helping can we, Galt?.
I really hope you find the community of yourself an appealing place to be. You rugged individualists can live in close proximity and you can take pride on that individualistic community to help with none.
Ayn Rand is so played. Atlas Shrugged has been relegated to fringes of reality.
Trying to compare funding for health insurance with Police and Fire protection is quite a stretch.
The size of the health care industry is tremendous.
You need to be very careful about turning over this amount of money
to congress. No one wants to face the dismal record of our government
with Soc. Sec. and medicare. The government stole the money from
Soc. Sec Trust fund and now were being told medicare is even in worse
shape.
What a croc! There is no “dismal record with Soc. Sec. and medicare,” that is a lie by the repugs, fox and the tea party.
Stole from the social security trust fund and now medicare is in dire straits?
Stop watching fox and you might get some actual facts.
This is my complaint about all these Randians; they whine and whine about how terrible government is and how instrusive; that private enterprise is pure, hurts no one and should be the default position.
Yet they fly and drive, they drink water and eat food. They trust the medicine they take is safe, they are probably the first to sue if something doesn’t go their way. Yet all that they do and all that they expect is not afforded to those the Randians deem as lowly, despicable losers who lazily hold their hands out for another alm.
I’m just so over this bs and arrogance.
Cregan! , so do I understand correctly that you do agree there should be some type of governmentally mandated health care guarantee?
Sorta believing you are saying yes, and I’m glad you would be, but I’m not certain I understand what you mean by “I’d like YOU to pay for it first. Once you have paid your fair share–maybe a 5% tax surcharge, then, I’ll be happy to pay mine.”
I empathisize with your frustration over how to assign some sort of responsibility equity. I don’t have any children and once had a little bitch phase I went through where I begrudged the fact that I had pay at the same tax share to have kids educated as parents do. Then I looked at my self in the metaphorical mirror one day and said to my reflection, “you know it is best for society, you know it is for the public good, dammit, grow up – get over it!”, and I did and felt all the better.
I believe in a sense of personal responsibility as well but I pretty much accept that we mortals will never be able to do an equitable job of assessing who or what to blame for most medical problems, especially when we are assessing blame relative to persons other than ourselves or close acquaintances. And even if we thought we had gotten pretty good at it but were never going to be 100% sure, would that mean that patients should start feeling a responsibility to assess how much they were to blame for every medical problem they were having?
In keeping with the OP, permit me some satirical license. Perhaps patients and their doctor can do some sort of “confession” thing like Catholics do with their priests. The doctor could hear the patient’s medical confession and then tell them how many hours they should look at themselves in a mirror and reflect upon their blame. For example, Grandma, who has smoked her whole life and has developed cancer X, might ask her doctor to what extent her smoking might have contributed to her cancer. Doc says, “Now of course you know smoking is one of the greatest medical sins, greater than eating cheeseburgers, even greater than using your cellphone while you are driving. So for every $1000 your cancer treatments costs society you should examine your reflection in a mirror a total of 1 hour. This a baseline blame absolution. Now the research currently is inconclusive as to what degree there is a link between your particular cancer and smoking. However, the consensus is that smoking raises the likelihood by 15% with a statistical margin of error of +/- 0.06 %. Based on that, in addition to your baseline absolution, you should examine yourself in a mirror for 14.4 to 15.6 hours and then feel absolved of blame. May I ask how often you used to eat cheeseburgers? Now realize you are at complete liberty to not disclose that information unless the cheeseburgers were from Mickey D’s. …. Twice a month huh? OK, that’s not too bad. Tack on another 5 hours. Now if at any point in your mirror examinations you begin having suicidal ideation, feel like you deserve to die or are being placed on a death panel review list, stop the examinations immediately and consult with a psychiatrist. A psychiatric evaluation may indicate that you qualify for early absolution of your blame.”
Thanks.
Cregan is undoubtedly the same person who believes that someone else of lesser importance in the great scheme of things should go first and fight those wars which he so avidly supports, as well. If they happen to get wounded, well, they should have known to watch out for those enemy munitions, isn’t that what the enemy does? Try to kill you? With the “All Volunteer Force” (haha) those people all chose to go risk their body and soul for financial opportunity. Any Randian will quickly tell you Patriotism is such a passe concept, only a fool would fall for it. It is very useful during elections because it makes such nice campaign slogans, but everyone knows they don’t actually mean those thiings that say! It really is everyone for themselves out there in the real world -and that it is just the way it should be!
Fools consider the lot of others, while Randians know they must think only of themselves, owing allegiance to no one person or Country. They ask nothing of anyone and expect nothing in return, other than the respect they merit as the exceptional people they are-intellectually superior, morally insightful to a degree which evades the oafish common folk, and certainly gifted with business acumen which sets them far apart from the remainder of us mere humans. Why should they share the fruits of their labor with others?
They certainly don’t need us leeching off of them, whereas we must have them to lead us, for we cannot hope to survive without them! The sainted Ayn Rand has told them so. The lesser of us thought “Atlas Shrugged” a mere long (very long, tediously long) winded novel, the brilliant among us recognized it for the fabulous intellectual treatise which it actually was, much like Tom Cruise immediately realized that L. Ron Hubbard had discovered the meaning of life with his incisive work, “Dianetics”!
Give to the less fortunate? Not take whatever it is you desire, whether you need it, or not, by force or treachery? To be a person of integrity, when we all know that honesty is a liability in this world we have made? You must surely be simpleminded! We should be very thankful that they don’t all “Go Galt” in response to the repeated pleas of some of the less tolerant among them. We would surely be in real trouble if those such as Cregan chose to deny us his pearls of wisdom and instead fell silent and cut us off from his gigantic contributions to Society. /s