Today’s bit of logical obsfucation comes from a tweet by @joshzepps
“Tell Republicans to practice what they preach by giving up their own government health care”
Certainly the honorable thing for anyone to do is to practice what they preach. But when exactly have the Republicans been preaching that nobody should ever get health care from the government?
For example, our active duty military members all get their health care from the government, all 1,445,000 of them. In addition, all their dependents and military retirees who opt to stay in the plan also get their health care from Uncle Sam. I’ve not heard of any Republicans saying that’s a bad thing.
There are also 2,748,978 civilian federal employees in the United States as of January 2009 most of whom receive some portion of their health care benefits through the government. Last I checked, it wasn’t part of any party platform to take that away.
But those numbers are a drop in the bucket compared to 45 million Americans who are on Medicare and other assistance programs. While those programs are certainly in need of an overhaul I’ve yet to see a majority of Republicans saying that they should be done away with all together. In fact, Republicans are responsible for a huge increase with Medicare part D prescription for seniors coverage.
So what is the reality? What the Republicans are suggesting is not that the government isn’t responsible to provide health care for anybody but rather that it isn’t appropriate or feasible for it to try to force health care coverage for everybody. Those are two very different things.
While it makes for a good soundbite to tell Senators to “give up their health care” it isn’t really anything more than an illogical political game of gotcha.