the tindog coffeehouse

Yesterday I touched on the BCS in college football and whether its complicated system of bowl selection, which heavily favors six major conferences to the detriment of others, is fair. Of course it’s not. Meanwhile, this question of fairness is at the core of another more serious debate going on right now, that of health care reform.

President Obama and congressional Democrats are pushing hard to pass a massive overhaul of this nation’s health care system, instituting a government-run universal health care program that would provide medical coverage for every American. Proponents of the program criticize the high cost of private insurance and medical care and point out the millions of Americans who can’t afford it. And in fact, Texas has the highest rate of uninsured citizens in the country (about 25% of Texans have no insurance, including 40.5% of Hispanics). They argue that providing a government-backed program in addition to private plans is the only way to keep people from falling through the cracks.

Sounds fair, right? And fair is good, isn’t it? Well, no.

Here’s the problem with fairness: Fair is never really fair. In order to put everyone on an equal footing, you have to take from one group to give to the other. That means penalizing those who excel, those who have put forth the most effort, those who often have made the biggest sacrifices and taken the biggest risks, and rewarding those who have done the least. It sends the message that achievement will be punished while apathy will be praised. That’s hardly the spirit of innovation that built this nation, and it’s not the kind of attitude that will continue propelling it forward through the 21st century.

In complaining about the Mountain West Conference’s playoff proposal, Big 12 Commissioner Dan Beebe said that moving to such a system would be “communistic”, requiring conferences like the Big 12 who “produce more in the marketplace” to give up some of that production to others who don’t produce. That production, of course, is money. Why should the Big 12 or the SEC or the Pac-10 give up highly lucrative television contracts and major bowl bids to less-popular conferences like the Mountain West or Conference USA?

By the same token, why should Americans who work hard to pay for private health insurance and consequently enjoy a certain amount of freedom when choosing their doctors and level of care have to pay more in taxes and give up those freedoms in order to provide coverage for others? How exactly is that fair?

Fairness, at least as it’s defined by liberals, is not a matter of elevating those on the bottom to the same level as those on the top; it’s about bringing the ones on top down to the level of those on the bottom. We see that in tax reform (“soaking the rich” to help the poor), education (No Child Left Behind, which makes it harder for top students to excel), and cap-and-trade (which penalizes businesses and individuals for consuming energy while giving the poorest citizens another government handout to pay their electric bills). And we see it in the Democrats’ universal health care plan.

Does opposing universal health care mean I don’t care about uninsured Americans? Of course not. I think we can all agree that there’s plenty of room for improvement within the current system. But don’t pretend for one moment that “ObamaCare” is about fairness, because it’s not fair at all.

Listen, I’m a father of two young girls, and fairness is a big point of contention with them. If one gets slightly more than the other or even just something different, there are plenty of protests. But by taking something away from one girl to give to the other — especially something she worked for and paid for herself — what kind of lesson am I teaching them? Certainly not a good one. Instead, they’re learning to work hard for what they want without fear of penalty for their success.

I just wish Democrats in Washington could learn the same thing.

Previously:
The BCS: ‘Communistic’ or not?
The ‘savior-based economy’
$700 Billion bailout ‘letting’ the banks win?