Most of us in western Europe cannot understand why the recently passed bill was quite so contentious in the USA. Giving everyone basic healthcare has been fundamental to our democratic states in Europe. I think the US view is rooted in what I suspect is a fundamental misunderstanding of Darwin.
America might be more closely based on an aggressive understanding of evolutionary principles than europe. The phrase ‘survival of the fittest‘ is a description applied to sum up a beautiful theory that has shown to be one of the great discoveries of all time. The oil barons and wealthy, successful oligarchs of early US industry found it a powerful, scientific way of conveniently justifying their success and their actions. It came to be interpreted by many as meaning the weak should go to the wall and only the fastest, toughest and hardest should survive.
It doesn’t.
It refers to a species ability to best fit and thrive with the environmental pressures and resources around it. Humans found collaboration and collective behaviour for trade, farming, defence, education and more, enabled us to specialize and achieve more together than individually. Weakness as much as strength in fact helps bind people together, so long as everyone is aware of of their own needs and skills. I mean, for example, which traits are a weakness and which strength?
Sickle cell anaemia is an illness that can kill people especially over 40 but it helps protect from malaria and allows people to survive long enough to successfully reproduce.
Us fatter people may not look so good in a loin cloth but in natural environments we survive and work longer in famine when thin people fail and weaken. Perhaps helping to support a diverse group when needed so that more people survive.
Ill or injured people get better or at least can still contribute. Prof S Hawkings could have been left to die in America unless he or close family had made enough money to provide long term care. Millions of ‘disabled’ people help make our societies work better, across all walks of life.
So I think somehow, some of America believes that allowing poor people to survive by giving medical support is anti-American because it rewards failure of people to look after themselves. Odd considering how many of the poor of Europe escaping the worst excesses of capitalism, built the USA.
Failure is a poor word to describe the poor. Failure is the extreme end of a spectrum of endeavour that ends at success. Thankfully, neither is completely achievable. Poor people are simply people with less money. There may well be unskilled people, lazy people, greedy people and pathetic people but they are not also grouped by solvency, they appear across society, poor to wealthy.
The Soviet Union also used the collective principle of Darwinism to support their political dogma. The individual is unimportant only the collective. Again misunderstanding the duality of collective value and the individuals value. If you as a person are not valued how is anything made up of people able to hold value.
The truth is we are all valuable but the sum of the parts adds up to even more. When we forget people are important and people who are vulnerable or poor are just as important then we lose a part of what makes us best fit and able to succeed.
The final irony is perhaps that the country that tainted its philosophy on a mangled Darwinian principle now rejects that beautiful proven theory for the old dogma of creationism. Still a perverse world!