Obamacare and Romneycare architect Jonathan Gruber was all over the cable-news networks this week as Obamacare collapse deepened. Rush Limbaugh especially focused on Gruber’s utopian talk of “genetic winners” unfairly paying less for health insurance on MSNBC's The Daily Rundown.
“We currently have a highly discriminatory system where if you're sick, if you've been sick, if you're gonna get sick, you cannot get health insurance. The only way to end that discriminatory system is to bring everyone into the system and pay one fair price,” proclaimed the MIT technocrat to Chuck Todd. “That means that the genetic winners, the lottery winners who've been paying an artificially low price because of this discrimination now will have to pay more.” Rush replied:
All of these libs think they're smarter than anybody. These faculty lounge theorists, they sit around and they talk about how stupid everybody else is and how if they had control, how they'd finally make everything work right. And we're seeing how the genetic aristocracy makes things work, because we're being ruled by the genetic aristocracy. We're being governed by an elite aristocracy of the mind, Obama, et al, and his lib buddies.
So Obama and Gruber and all their friends, their status is life largely due to being born into the acceptable physical and social class. And that is affirmed by what university they get into. So that makes them part of the aristocracy. And then, by right of being in that class, in that elite aristocracy, they get to punish other lottery winners on behalf of the genetically inferior.
They are the genetic aristocracy. They're the winners of the genetic lottery. They get to sit here and determine who the losers are, and they tell others who are also okay, but not really qualified to be in the aristocracy, "You're gonna pay through the nose because those people are genetically inferior. And we're gonna call that fairness. And we're gonna call that nondiscrimination. And we're gonna call that fixing this country."
AlanJoelNY at RedState had the same feeling:
The idea of a "genetic winner" is incredibly chilling. Brave New world-ish even. It completely removes the idea of personal responsibility in the health equation.
The Affordable Care Act is only about being affordable to some. It is revealed to be another giant wealth transfer. Take the genetic lottery winners, kick them off their freely chosen policies, put them on the more expensive Obamacare government exchanges, and subsidize those who have been discriminated against to make it fair for all.
Fairness is yet again the objective of, and gift from, the government — no matter the cost to our wallets or our dignity.
An MRC colleague of mine said this whole discussion reminded him of Kurt Vonnegut’s 1961 sci-fi fable “Harrison Bergeron.”
It is the year 2081. Because of Amendments to the Constitution, every American is fully equal, meaning that no one is smarter, better-looking, stronger, or faster than anyone else. The Handicapper General and a team of agents ensure that the laws of equality are enforced. The government forces citizens to wear "handicaps" (a mask if they are too handsome or beautiful, earphones with deafening radio signals to make intelligent people unable to concentrate and form thoughts, and heavy weights to slow down those who are too strong or fast).
