Thursday, August 20, 2009

Single Payer

In August, 1972 the artist Christo made a second attempt to hang a 400 meter curtain across Rifle gap in Colorado. The display lasted 28 hours. There was no real purpose to this project other than to do it for its own sake; the artists prerogative or something. The transience and frivolity of the enterprise were not considered grounds to dissuade the artist from proceeding, no matter how objectively pointless.

The left pursues single payers for the same reason that Christo hung his curtain. It is simply a socialst ideal that should be pursued for its own sake, not because it delivers any tangible benefits, (and in fact is likely to be detrimental) to the healthcare of 300 million people. The goal is not to improve people lives by implementing enlightened policy, the goal is to satisfy an emotional yearning, to achieve a socialist ambition that origniates not in rational thought, but in a dreamy romantic fantasy unvexed by fact.

The left want single payer, not because it makes any sense, but because it is part of an orthodoxy that too few of them question. Just as Christo was forced to dismantle his creation after a few hours because of the elements, the left really don’t care what becomes of healthcare if they achieve single payer. The goal is not to improve or stabilize or even establish an enduring model. It is simply to promote the illusion of the committed activist, marching endlessly, and petulantly toward imagined paradise.

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