Hilary's 47 Million Uninsured Americans Demagoguery

In her speech before the Democratic Party Convention last night, Hilary Clinton made the claim that 47 million Americans are without health insurance, which is not true as I have previously explained here in a detailed breakdown of the numbers and then discussed with another post on 23 July 2008 here. Of the 47 million, 10.2 million are neither U.S. citizens nor legal residents. Of course, if the rest were desperately poor Americans who could not afford health insurance, which is what we are supposed to think is the case for all 47 million, we would still have many Americans without health insurance. However, even such a number would not justify the use of government force to make everyone forfeit their options on health insurance and comply with a government health insurance mandate.

In fact, only 19.0 million Americans without health care insurance have household incomes of less than $50,000 per year! Of these, some would have health care, but for the fact they are briefly between job changes. These 19 million Americans are also not without health care, since many qualify for Medicaid or can receive treatment at hospital emergency rooms. In some cases they can go to clinics, such as those Michelle Obama helped set up for the University of Chicago Medical Center. Strange that Michelle Obama has not corrected her husband and Hilary on their use of the 47 million uninsured to imply that 47 million Americans do not get health care!

Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama, and others using the 47 million uninsured Americans as a reason for imposing a government system of health insurance upon Americans is clearly demogoguery. They both have long had Senate and campaign staffs to look into this number for them and both are supposed to be highly intelligent people educated at excellent universities. Yet, they use this mythical number to mislead the American people so that they can build a highly socialist society. They knowingly are defrauding the American people and virtually no one is calling them on this fraud. It makes it very clear that they love socialism far more than they love the truth. This is a common trait for socialists and a necessary one, since socialism has so demonstrably failed as a path for good government.

The only proper goal for government is to protect the inalienable rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Free individuals are free to form voluntary organizations to help any such unfortunate people as they wish who do not have health care insurance. This is the route those who call for government coercion should be taking, but they will not put their money where their mouths are. Meanwhile, those who do not believe in socialism are more likely to voluntarily contribute to charities to take care of those in need. If helping those in need is in any way virtuous, that virtue must be attributed to those who help voluntarily, not to those who wish to use force to accomplish that end. There is no virtue in socialism no matter how great the pretense.