Are We Selfish?

With the passage of the health care legislation liberals and progressives make conservatives out to be selfish fools who want the current system to remain. They parade story after story of people who can't get health insurance, people who suffer somehow because of the shortcomings of the insurance industries. The purpose of this parade is to paint those who oppose this legislation as uncaring, unfeeling, selfish people who would rather see these people die than do something about it. The problem isn't that conservatives are selfish; the problem is that there are two ethical theories at war with each other: egoism and altruism.

Egoism is a moral theory that holds that an individual should be the beneficiary of his own hard work. It holds that if an individual wants to pursue happiness, they can by their own sweat. It holds that if an individual makes money through work that they have done, it is their right to keep it and use it for their benefit. It holds that if a man creates something that is beneficial for everyone, he has a right to use or sell that creation any way he wishes - and the profit that he receives from that creation is also his by right. Egoism is about enjoying the end result of your hard work, of taking responsibility for your future and working to make sure that future is as promising as you can make it.

Altruism, on the other hand, is a moral theory that holds that man must sacrifice his money, his work, his happiness, and himself for the good of someone else. It holds that the needy, the impoverished, the hungry all have a right to a man's earnings before he does.

The health care legislation has put these two theories at odds with each other in many different areas. The doctors who will be impacted is one example. Doctors spend many years in school learning their skills. They spend many more years in internships honing those skills. After they enter into practice, they spend countless hours keeping up with current medical research. Because of the need of their skill and the countless hours taken away from other parts of their lives, doctors expect to be paid what their time and skill are worth by the people who seek to utilize that time and skill for their health. Our government had already placed limits on what doctors could earn through insurance with Medicare and Medicaid, which only pays doctors a fraction of what it costs them to treat their patients. Now, with an expansion of government-backed health insurance and private insurance companies being stretched to the limits, doctors can expect to see even less compensation for their time and skill. But they are called greedy and selfish because their costs go up.

Insurance companies are made out to be evil businesses that do nothing but suck money out of people's pockets. In reality, insurance companies see only a two - three percent profit in their business. People have misconceptions about what health insurance is, which is one of the reasons why we are in this mess. Health insurance was created to cover people's expenses in the event of an unexpected medical emergency, such as a broken bone or a catastrophic illness. Insurance companies deal with risk; the higher they feel the likelihood is that you will use their insurance, the higher your premiums will be because they insurance companies will need the money it will require to pay your medical bills. For years people have been using health insurance for anything - colds, annual exams, regular prescriptions. Because insurance is being used all of the time for anything, premiums are naturally going to go up - the risk that you will use their insurance has gone up. But the insurance companies are labeled as greedy and selfish.

Pharmaceutical companies are being targeted too. The legislation is expected to cut pharmaceutical companies' profits by a large percentage. But pharmaceutical companies use a large amount of those profits to research new life-saving medications, something that can't be cheap. These people work tirelessly to develop drugs to save people's lives and combat any of the diseases out there, and now their ability to develop these drugs will be taken away from them. But they are being called selfish and greedy.

And then there is the American people, who are being treated as a collective rather than as individuals. The American people, most of whom work hard to provide for themselves and their families, will now find themselves being taxed to pay for this new insurance program. They will also be made to buy insurance that they may not need or be able to afford. The hardest hit will be those with the highest income - people who have worked, saved, and invested toward their future and will now find it taken away from them in order for the government to be able to subsidize the insurance premiums of those who may not have earned as much or worked as hard. This redistribution of wealth is a slap to the face of those who have achieved their own American dream, those people who are often called greedy and selfish simply because they have more than others. Never mind that many of these people donate to charities of their own free will. Many of them own their own businesses and will be forced to offer insurance benefits to their employees, benefits that they may not be able to afford to give. Small and large business owners will be forced to lay off workers in order to afford to pay for benefits for those remaining. People who are currently contemplating opening a small business may think twice when they see other companies teetering on the edge because of the new insurance mandates. But these business owners are labeled selfish and greedy.

Is selfishness the desire to keep what you have rightfully earned? Is it selfish to expect to be rightfully compensated for your work or the product of your time and effort? If this is what we are defining as evil, then we will have many hard lessons ahead as a country. When we see our private insurance companies disappearing because they can no longer afford to stay in business; when we see a decrease in the amount of new life-saving or life-enhancing drugs being produced; when we see the number of new enterprises diminishing and unemployment increasing; when we see a decrease in the number of productive individuals because it no longer pays to be productive, then we will see which is the true evil: egoism or altruism.