In Obama at Portsmouth: ‘Civil Rights’ for the Sick I criticized President Obama’s constant refrain about insurance company “discrimination,” noting that
[t]his charge of insurance company discrimination is intended, no doubt, to make health care reform — now presented as merely health insurance reform — seem like simply another anti-discrimination law, a civil rights law for the sick
Now, almost as though I had invented him, comes Jonathan Alter of Newsweek with a simplistic argument that Obama needs to “reframe the debate” and sell “Health Care As A Civil Right.” Sure, he writes, the public option and dumping on Big Pharma and regulating insurance are all important (unlike the attempt to “bend the cost curve,”),
[b]ut these worthy goals have overshadowed the moral principle of nondiscrimination….
The only thing that should be unbreakable in a piece of legislation is the principle behind it….
The core principle behind health-care reform is—or should be—a combination of Social Security insurance and civil rights. Passage would end the shameful era in our nation’s history when we discriminated against people for no other reason than that they were sick….
While we’re at it why don’t we also declare a civil right to government-provided automobile insurance and end the shameful practice of discriminating against bad drivers by charging them more.
I would have more respect for Alter’s devotion to “the moral principle of nondiscrimination” if he opposed discrimination wherever it raises its ugly head. But not only does he not do that, he in fact supports discrimination in the service of causes he likes, such as affirmative action. For example,
Senior Editor and Columnist Jonathan Alter writes that the debate over affirmative action in education boils down to whether universities should be free to pass judgment or be told by the government how to choose.
Universities, he believes, should be able to discriminate on the basis of race without being told by the government to stop.
Some “moral principle.”
