Tampa Tribune - Congressman Ross Op Ed "Showing True Compassion"
Tampa Tribune - Congressman Ross Op Ed "Showing True Compassion"
Washington,
Jul 15 -
I'm no theologian, but I am pretty sure you cannot stand before almighty God on the Day of Judgment and say, "I paid my taxes."
No, our obligation to our fellow man is not collective; it is personal.
The late president of the Southern Baptist Convention, Adrian Pierce Rogers, once famously said, "The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else." And he is absolutely right.
The recent Obamacare decision only crystalized this truth.
I can already hear what some may be saying. That I don't care about the uninsured. That I am heartless and callous to the needy. That I am "unfair."
Nothing could further from the truth. On the contrary, there is nothing "warm-hearted" about a mom and dad needing to work an extra job to pay the taxes to finance waste and fraud in Medicaid. There is nothing "caring" about 15 unelected bureaucrats telling seniors what procedures the government will allow them to have. There is nothing "fair" about a government formula deciding what health insurance is best for me and my family. And since when is solidifying big insurance monopolies and payoffs to big Pharma, as Obamacare does, good for progress?
I know what some, especially Obamacare supporters, are saying. "Republicans didn't do anything about health care for years — where were you then?" And they are right. I was not in Congress, but I am not here to defend my party. My history, if nothing else, will show that I am not afraid to be honest when my party does wrong. On health care, my party, nationally, has been woefully inept. But two wrongs don't make a right, and the inability of Washington Republicans to offer a coherent alternative does not make Obamacare, by default, the right path.
I believe we can harness the inherent compassionate nature of the American people and couple it with the power of the free market to keep costs low and quality high.
Before we do that, we must establish that health care is not a right. I know this may sound harsh, but it is true. Health care is a service given by one person to another. You no more have a right to someone caring for you, giving you medicine or operating on you than you have a right for your neighbor to cut your lawn, wash your car or babysit your child. No, health care is the benevolence of doctors who spend a decade or more in school to heal the sick. Health care is the heart of a nurse dedicating their life to the care of others. There is no indentured servitude in America, and no one has a "right" to the services of another.
The question then is not how we force one person to finance the decisions of another. Instead, it becomes how we reward those who answer the call to serve and incentivize Americans to aid their fellow man...(read more)
