VANITY 99 Year Commentary on Obamacare--The New Insurance Act

Illustrated London News ^ | 7/27/1912 | G.K. Chesterton

[Dr. Sivana]

Now, this long perspective of progress [...] produces a third and yet more curious variety in those who are not only political philosophers, but politicians. It produces the habit of offering something new and often nasty, and hastily adding that there is plenty more coming in the slow evolution of human society. Sometimes it takes the form of saying that they give us something we don't like this year, but they will give us the liking for it next year. [...]

Now, when I am told that I shall have lots more of the same thing, I want to know what thing. [...] Thus Mr. Lloyd George says that his Insurance Act [...] is a very good act, but it is only a beginning. [...]But it cannot be rationally held that it is a good beginning unless we know what is likely to be the end. What is it that the Insurance Act begins? [...] Well, the answer seems elaborately simple, and nevertheless, rather alarming. [...]

For instance: the first principle of the Act is the legal locking-up of one particular part of the earnings of the poor to meet one particular part of the perils of the poor. No defender of the Act will deny that definition. No friend of the Act would deny that it does forcibly separate a part of a man's pay for a part of his needs. A friend of the Act would only say that he thought the need so large and the sum so small that the worker, willing or unwilling, made an excellent bargain. [...]

I should be angry if my son lost his last tram and his last job through the absence of a sum which now stood like a rampart between me and German Measles.

[...]

The other chief principle of the Act [...] is the recognition by law that certain men must toil and certain other men hire them to toil; the first formal denial of the free citizen we have had since the fall of Rome.

-----

 

 

[Dr. Sivana]

Ninety-nine years ago, G. K. Chesterton wrote on the wisdom of a personal medical mandate, the proposed British Insurance Act. His words are as true today as they were then.