ACA Repeal/Replace: Progressives Face Moral Dilemma

[Bob Butler 54]

Here we have a very likely partisan article from CNN, Pediatricians say Florida hurt sick kids to help big GOP donors.  Read at the surface level, assuming the follow the money trail approach is a decent one, Florida GOP politicians withheld care from children in order to please and increase profits for donor insurance companies.

You can read it at its own level, but you don't have to look deep to see a values question.  Do folk care more about money, or children?

That's the bottom line.  Are folks in it to help each other out, or looking to squeak out a few extra bucks for themselves?  Generally, blue folk would tend towards binding communities together and helping each other.  Red folk value independence and self sufficiency.  In many ways you can take these differences, point at different regions, see an emphasis on different lessons learned, and hope for some degree of mutual respect. Too often you get mutual demonization rather than mutual respect.

But if one holds strong values of mutual support, it seems that economic values and independence can be taken too far.  The article seems to illustrate how the healthy and wealthy will harm others for a buck.  This is a values clash.  This makes it nigh on unsolvable.  Those with economic values will always have economic values.  Some will pursue a buck regardless of who they hurt.

Something is wrong.