The Health Care Blog: GOP to Uninsured: Drop Dead

“We are now contemplating, Heaven save the mark, a bill that would tax the well for the benefit of the ill.” No, that’s not Senate Minority Leader John Boehner, Rush Limbaugh or any of the other usual suspects complaining about the cost of health care reform. Rather, it’s the beginning of an editorial in the Aug. 15, 1949 issue of The New York State Journal of Medicine denouncing attempts to provide every American with health insurance. Sure, 90 percent were uninsured then, versus around 15 percent, today. But what’s amazing is the way the overheated arguments by conservatives have changed hardly at all in six decades, as evidenced by an op-ed in the July 15, 2009 Wall Street Journal entitled “Universal Health Care Isn’t Worth Our Freedom.” Read More: The Health Care Blog: GOP to Uninsured: Drop Dead