Labrador comments irrational

Raul Labrador’s nonchalant denial of human casualties notwithstanding, his Lewiston town-hall defense of the GOP’s hastily revised repeal of the Affordable Care Act exposes the fundamental irrationality and cruelty of Republican approaches to health care.

Faced with solidly researched data presented by health care professionals and others, Labrador suggested that Americans with preexisting conditions or too poor to afford health care are the new welfare queens. People with cancer, kids with birth defects and seniors unable to pay extortionately high prices for prescription medicines are all waiting to pick the pockets of good, hard-working Americans.

This sounds stupid, cruel and irrational because it is. Perhaps the most deeply held remaining GOP orthodoxy has to do with rejecting socialism, no matter the economic or human costs. Regardless of how badly free-market capitalism fails to meet the needs of American citizens, it must always be the best solution.

In this case, the eminently logical solution is single-payer (or Medicare-For-All) health care at half the cost we now pay per person. Instead, Labrador insists that taxpayers continue to subsidize a parasitic insurance industry whose profit derives from denying care to as many people as possible.

Chris Norden

Moscow