The Right’s priorities hit home at a town hall meeting held by Rep. Rob Woodall, R-Georgia, when he chastised one of his constituents who worried that Ryan’s plan would leave Americans like her, whose employer doesn’t extend health benefits to retirees, out of luck.
“Hear yourself, ma’am. Hear yourself,” Woodall lectured the woman. “You want the government to take care of you, because your employer decided not to take care of you. My question is, ‘When do I decide I’m going to take care of me?’”
However, another constituent noted that Woodall accepted government-paid-for health insurance for himself.
“You are not obligated to take that if you don’t want to,” the woman said. “Why aren’t you going out on the free market in the state where you’re a resident and buy your own health care? Be an example. …
“Go and get it in a single-subscriber plan, like you want everybody else to have, because you want to end employer-sponsored health plans and government-sponsored health plans. … Decline the government health plan and go to Blue Cross/Blue Shield or whoever, and get one for yourself and see how tough it is.”
Woodall answered that he was taking his government health insurance “because it’s free. It’s because it’s free.”
Self-reliance, it seems, is easier to preach to others than to practice yourself.
Woodall’s explanation recalled the hypocrisy of free-market heroine Ayn Rand, whom Rep. Ryan has cited as his political inspiration. In her influential writings, Rand ranted against social programs that enabled the “parasites” among the middle-class and the poor to sap the strength from the admirable rich, but she secretly accepted the benefits of Medicare after she was diagnosed with lung cancer.
A two-pack-a-day smoker, Rand had denied the medical science about the dangers of cigarettes, much as her acolytes today reject the science of global warming. However, when she developed lung cancer, she connived to have Evva Pryor, an employee of Rand’s law firm, arrange Social Security and Medicare benefits for Ann O’Connor, Ayn Rand using her husband’s last name.
In 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand, Scott McConnell, founder of the Ayn Rand Institute’s media department, quoted Pryor as saying: “Doctors cost a lot more money than books earn and she could be totally wiped out.”
So, when push came to shove, even Ayn Rand wasn’t above getting help from the “despised government.” However, her followers, including Rep. Ryan, now want to strip those guaranteed benefits from other Americans of more modest means than Ayn Rand.
It seems it’s okay for average Americans to be wiped out.
Just when you think that you can't be surprised!
ETA: Ayn Rand accepting medicare is disputed. That she received social security payments isn't disputed by anyone, and I don't find that to have been hypocritical, as she could say she was reclaiming what had been taken from her against her will earlier.
8 comments:
I never knew about that story of medicare & Ayn Rand. One would have hoped in her dying days that she finally got that her foundational belief was "wrong". Of seeing the light in her dark tunnel.
What idiots. Benefits from employers are a form of negotiated remuneration just like wages. Objectivism/libertarian acolytes should not be knocking them.
My dear fellow, you really should get on the Tweeter.
Where is the hypocrisy connie? You get to print your stupid drivel thanks to the R & D paid for by the Pentagon and developed by the free market. Oooohhhh...look at me, I'm thwap the retard, I'm so smart because Ayn Rand was a hypocrite duh...
Fuckin' moron. I don't even like Ayn Rand, but next to you, she truly was a genius.
Retard.
Hypocrisy and idiocy. There is no shame among those who would happily protect corporations who raid workers' pension funds to bankroll obscene executive bonuses. I'd say they're the ones with front row seats at the public trough.
The story you're telling about Ayn Rand is debunked nonsense from an attack website. See: http://fuguewriter.wordpress.com/2011/05/19/internet-myths-about-ayn-rand/
The "Ann O'Connor" thing is complete nonsense. The name on her government records is "Ayn Rand."
The rest of your reasoning is up to the accuracy standard of this claim about Rand.
Actually Rand's behavior is quite common among those who believe social programs are unjustified. They rationalize it as stealing back some of "their" money. I see the same thing with my sister, who's very hot against welfare "cheats" but who also wants me to pursue a rather shaky claim to being disabled because "we might as well get some too."
MRB,
There's no reasoning to critique. I provide two sentences, one introducing the quote and the second one commenting on it.
If I've relayed a myth, then I apologize, but you appear to have invented something out of thin air yourself.
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