Over at the Huffington Post, Colorado’s own liberal media gadly, Jason Salzman, offered some thoughts about health care politics in response to hearing State Senator Greg Brophy on my radio show, Backbone Radio.

My response to Salzman follows:

Jason,

In response to your question “Does Brophy think his steely votes, against the touchiest and feeliest stuff, should be off the table come election time?", I’d suggest this:

I don’t think Brophy’s votes would be a political liability where he currently runs for office.  If he runs for state-wide office later, I’m sure these things will be brought up (including by you), and it’s possible they could hurt him depending on the spin.  That said, Brophy’s position as I see it is much more about supporting limited government and personal responsibility rather than trying to impose socially conservative policies on us – even though Greg is certainly a social issues conservative.  Again, this is just my view.  I haven’t asked Greg what he thought of your note or question.

More importantly, I think you’re missing the key policy issue here. 

The maternity coverage mandate is outrageous.  People can negotiate for maternity inclusion if they want it.  Including it for people who don’t want it (like me) simply forces up insurance costs for everyone.  And since childbirth is a fairly expensive process – and can be very expensive if something bad happens – this is one of the most expensive mandates a state could impose.  You write about repealing the mandate as if the repeal would block the ability of people to get health insurance that covers maternity, which is obviously not true. 

Wanting to repeal the mandate is not “ugly” or “heartless” or against women “especially poor ones."  It’s about wanting government out of what should be private transactions.  It is also about saying that it is not a proper role of government to force people who will not have children to pay the costs for those who decide to have children.  Indeed, the childless already do enough for those with kids through their property taxes paying for public education and through federal deductions for having kids.

Also, it’s pretty outrageous for you to say that Brophy thinks health care politics are “ugly…because of the compassion people feel…"  Health care politics are ugly because the left will do and say anything to eliminate freedom of contract in this area, in part because they believe it helps unions.  Compassion should not be, indeed cannot be, expressed by government.  It’s a personal feeling to be expressed by individuals through charity or other ways in which people can help – if they want to.  Government “compassion” for poor people tends to keep them poor.  Government “compassion” for black people did more to destroy black society in American than any other policy since Reconstruction.

If you want to talk about compassion, perhaps measured by charitable giving, it’s not surprising to me that “red” states are consistently more charitable/compassionate than blue states.  Liberals, or at least their policies, are not truly compassionate.  They’re just making themselves feel good by spending other people’s money.

In my view, even though I’m not a social issues conservative, I find Greg Brophy to be one of the most principled people I know and I’m proud to consider him a friend.  And for the record, he does have slightly libertarian leanings…again, in my opinion.

Best,
Ross