In a recent column, the noted economist Paul Krugman asked why is it that Republicans have “a deep, unreasoning hatred of the idea that government policy may help some people get health care.” I think the answer is staring us in the face.
They oppose public support for the public—in medical care as well as education.
For many years I argued that our priorities were upside down in this country. I thought it odd that a person could pay their taxes and send their children to school “free,” but had to pay to live. They could not pay their taxes and get medical care “free.”
Many of us have argued that a person with some medical conditions could live if they received medical treatments, but die without it. It seemed that education had priority over life itself.
To correct this odd situation, many liberals have argued that health care is a right, not a privilege.
Conservatives have tended to argue that there is nothing in the Constitution about medical care being a right as if that wins the debate. They assert that medical care is no more a right than owning a car or a house.
It should be just as clear that the right of education is also not in the Constitution. But more people seem to see education as a right more than they see medical care as such.
However, I would caution people on the so-called liberal side of the argument not to rely on the idea that education is regarded as a right. Yes, maybe it is widely perceived that way; however, there are some corners of society that are working feverishly to undermine public education.
Right-wing folks are pushing the idea that education should be privatized and that neither education nor medical care should be wholly a public function. While many can see the so-called free-market hand in the arguments against Obama Care, the free market idea is currently blasting away in education arenas.
The ideas of the late economist, Milton Friedman, the patron saint of the free market, may undergird the attack on k-12 education currently being led by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in her relentless push for charter schools.
In a 1955 essay called, “The Role of Government in Education,” Friedman proposed a plan for K-12 schooling, where the government would provide the funding, but the schools would be run privately. To accomplish this Friedman proposed that the government stop providing public schools and give parents or guardians vouchers for each child, which would be used to purchase education on the “free market.”
At the time, Friedman’s idea was too radical for even conservatives. However, in the 1980s and 1990s, the country had swung so far to the right that charter schools and vouchers became much more popular.
Today, Betsy DeVos and other free-market education advocates push homeschooling, private online schooling, and charter schools as well as vouchers. They call it school choice, but it is merely privatization with government money.
Thus, there is no real effort on the part of conservatives to improve education for all or medical care for all.
