a cynical thought to “On Ethics”
Watching the basic thrust of the Health Care debating, and the rather easy manner some things get politicized in the most weirdly warped manner, within a legislative process laid bare to a root of fragility…
the focus of the why bother here gets lost. Here’s an example of perhaps not the most hard scrabbled case, but mundanely relatable nonetheless.
My son was dropped from our family’s employer-sponsored health insurance shortly after graduating from college in May. While filling out the application for a new policy, he asked me how to answer a question about his marijuana use in the past year. I said, “Honestly.” He checked a box indicating he smoked very occasionally and was denied coverage. Now he is uninsured while countless pot-smoking liars have coverage. My husband thinks I gave our son foolish advice. Do you agree? — M.H., Montclair, N.J.
Randy Cohen gives the answer, with one dangling sentence lying about.
And so, were I filling out that form, I’d lie without remorse. (All right, with some remorse. Accompanied by resentment. I blame my upbringing. And my inept, albeit imaginary, therapist.) But I could not advise my child to lie — even an older child, even to an insurance company. I would feel a parental duty to teach integrity and encourage civic engagement. So I would urge him to supply an honest answer on that form and write an urgent letter to his elected representatives, particularly those working on health care reform. The real solution here is to guarantee access to medical care to all people, not just those pot-smoking liars.
What? Are you nuts? The elected officials are really going to introduce recreational drug politics into a debate already blasted apart at the seams by auxiliary and tangental policies of — Joseph Wilson’s “You Lie!’ regarding goddamned immigration policy, and Stupak entering the fray against Abortion.