Is It Now ‘Respectable’ to be a Moocher?

A New Jersey Star-Ledger guest editorial titled I'm battling cancer: Why are medical costs harming the lives meds try to save was published early last year. The complaint of the author, a woman battling cancer, is with out-of-pocket costs of the medications—even with health insurance; even with ObamaCare. The point was to advocate for a bill in the NJ legislature to cap out-of-pocket expenses at $200 per month (the author currently pays $550 per month, including her $250 insurance premium. She doesn’t say how much she is not required to pay, thanks to insurance and government subsidies [other people]).

Now, we can all sympathize with a person struck with cancer. We all know someone who has been afflicted, or been afflicted ourselves.

But on reading this article, my first thought was to attack the call for yet another health “insurance” mandate. It is such mandates that has pushed health “insurance” premiums beyond the reach of many. The ACA plans are already heavily subsidized, with purchasers paying only a small percentage of the actual premium. The rest of the cost is forced onto everyone else in the form of inflated premiums. This bill, A2337, would shift more of the burden onto premiums, making “insurance” even more unaffordable, forcing more people into subsidized plans. (I use scare quotes around “insurance” because actual health insurance has been outlawed in this country. If insurance were legalized, this article wouldn’t have been written. From here on, I won’t use scare quotes with this understanding.)

But that didn’t seem like enough. There was something very disturbing about this article, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

Then it hit me: When did moocherism become so acceptable that an article like this could be printed in a major newspaper? There was a time when being on the dole was considered shameful. A serious need might justify privately asking for charitable help. But a person asking others for help in paying her bill wouldn’t broadcast it. She would keep it private, and she certainly wouldn’t consider forcing others to help her—not if she had integrity. Here, we have a person boasting about her inability to afford to pay his bills. She gives no reason why she might be deserving of others’ helped. Why is she in this predicament? Bad luck, or bad choices? Why, at 63 years old, is her only income a $750 disability check? She doesn't say. She apparently believes it’s not relevant; that mooching is now so mainstream that she doesn’t feel the responsibility to at least explain why she deserves help from her fellow man.

Her need alone not only justifies shifting her bills onto others’ shoulders; but forcing it onto others shoulders through law. She just lays the pity on thick. I can’t pay my bills. Therefor, the world owes me. She probably figures her demands are legitimate, since she can hide the immorality of the taking behind the fact of politicians legitimizing it through legislation. But make no mistake: Taking others’ property by force is wrong whether you pull street robberies or use the government as your hired gun. This may sound callous, at a glance. But make no mistake. A government is supposed to protect us from human predators, not be the predators’ agent. What about the people and employers already struggling to pay artificially inflated premiums? Where is the consideration for them—the victims?

But that’s what America is coming to. Have unmet needs? Didn’t work for it or plan for it in advance? No matter. It doesn’t matter any more whether an unmet need is the result of misfortune beyond a person’s control or the result of laziness, incompetence, or irresponsibility. The mere fact of an unmet need entitles you. The mere fact that politicians pass a law to effect it makes it OK to put your burdens on people you don’t know. America the nation of self-reliance is becoming the nation of the greedy needy.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be too hard on Debbie Biase. The lie that healthcare is a “right” has been peddled for so long—and so rarely challenged in the only way it can be challenged, morally—that it should not be surprising that there is a “NJ Out of Pocket Prescription Cost Limit Coalition.” The idea that you—not “society” or government—are morally responsible for paying your own way, and that insurance is merely a tool for you to use toward that end, is alien to most people, at least when it comes to healthcare.

Of course, that attitude increasingly extends beyond healthcare. We hear more and more about a “right” to an education, or a “right” to a livable wage regardless of your productiveness, and so on. When mere need is considered an automatic moral claim on others wallets; when productive self-responsible individuals’ financial health is at the mercy of anyone claiming an unmet financial need; when what one “deserves” becomes completely divorced from what one earns; when moral character deteriorates to the point where articles like this one don’t elicit outraged moral outcries in defense of the people who will be victimized by such predatory legislation; when need trumps justice: It makes one wonder how America the prosperous free country can survive much beyond another generation or two.

Related Reading:

NJ's Minimum Wage Approval Highlights the Moral Disease that Afflicts America

The Altruistic Assault on Gilead Sciences

Sanders Links His Socialist Economic Politics to Christian Ethics

Our Pick-Pocket Nation

The Worship of Need: The Path to Communism