If you are in the tea party, you are not allowed to collect Medicare

A common critique from some on the left about the tea party movement is that many in the movement are hypocrites for saying we need limited government, while at the same time benefiting from various government programs. This article in Rolling Stone magazine promotes this theme by talking about how Senate candidate Joe Miller received benefits from something called the Denali KidCare program back in the 90's, but has since publicly criticized the program. Miller defended himself by saying that he is opposed to Federal funding of the program, not to the program in general.

The author then launches into a wider critique of the tea party movement.

I can’t even tell you how many people I interviewed at Tea Party events who came up with one version or another of the Joe Miller defense. Yes, I’m on Medicare, but… I needed it! It’s those other people who don’t need it who are the problem!

Or: Yes, it’s true, I retired from the police/military/DPW at 54 and am on a fat government pension that you and your kids are going to be paying for for the next forty years, while I sit in my plywood-paneled living room in Florida watching Fox News, gobbling Medicare-funded prescription medications, and railing against welfare queens. But I worked hard for those bennies! Not like those other people!

This whole concept of “good welfare” and “bad welfare” is at the heart of the Tea Party ideology, and it’s something that is believed implicitly across the line. It’s why so many of their political champions, like Miller, and sniveling Kentucky rich kid Rand Paul (a doctor whose patient base is 50% state insured), and Nevada “crazy juice” Senate candidate Sharron Angle (who’s covered by husband Ted’s Federal Employee Health Plan insurance), are so completely unapologetic about taking state aid with one hand and jacking off angry pseudo-libertarian mobs with the other.

(He really zinged Rand Paul on that one...ha, ha..."sniveling rich kid". And Sharon "crazy juice" Angle...stop, please stop. I am falling out of my chair.)

Anyway, on the surface, this argument seems clever, but if you use your brain for a second, you realize it makes no sense. First of all, it would be like me saying that anyone who was against the Bush tax cuts should refuse to accept them and send the money back to the US Treasury immediately; or that anyone who is demanding that we end our "addiction" to oil should not only refuse to drive a car, but should also refuse to buy any product that was ever placed on a truck or a plane; or that someone who believes in socialized medicine should refuse any treatment or medicine that was ever developed in the pursuit of profit.

But more importantly, does this guy realize that when the government takes over a function that was otherwise provided by business and/or charity, that it then puts those businesses and charities out of business? With Medicare, for example, the government essentially destroyed the private market for health insurance for the elderly. There are no private options. So what else are people supposed to do? Plus, people are forced to participate. They have to pay in, there is no opt out. So, is it really hypocritical for someone to oppose the existence of Medicare, but then also kindly ask their representatives in Congress to make sure that the government has the resources necessary to ultimately pay for the Medicare benefits that were promised to them - benefits that they were forced to pay for over the course of their entire career? I don't think so.

And on that Sharon Angle thing, getting health insurance through your state government, when you are employed by the state government and it's part of your entire employee compensation package, is not the same thing as receiving a government benefit. It's not even close.