When I was listening to the news Sunday night, they played an interview with Ron Paul. I know people who think Ron Paul is the best thing since buttered bread, but after this interview I have even less of a clue as to why.

What stopped me in my tracks was Paul’s instance that “health care is not a right.”

Additionally, he said that insurance companies have every right to deny people on the basis of pre-existing conditions.

Over at Eric‘s place, we once jokingly referred to the conservative Republican policy as, “Fuck you, I’ve got mine,” after a conservative made the comment that he was perfectly happy with his health care and didn’t want the government to screw things up for him.

I cannot even wrap my mind around this mindset, because it is wrong on so many levels.

First and foremost, it boggles my mind that conservatives–most of whom claim to be Christians–believe so strongly in karma. According to conservatives, if someone doesn’t have health care (or a job, or whatever) it’s because they are lazy, or they don’t work hard enough, or they did something bad to cause their current state.

Second, that attitude–fuck you, I’ve got mine–pretty much goes against the New Testament. I don’t think the take of the Good Samaritan implied that if someone can’t afford health insurance they don’t deserve medical care. My understanding is that we are expected to help others, regardless of who we are, who they are, and what they have done.

Third, such a policy is narrow-minded in the extreme. No just on a financial level, but on a public health level. The fact this attitude is concurrent with a possible flu pandemic shows just how incapable some of these people are of seeing beyond their own noses.

The fact these individuals can hold such mutually exclusive ideas in mind (Christianity and refusal to accept the need to universal health care) leads me to wonder about the mental strain that is required to keep such mutually exclusive ideas in the same brain.