What Would the Founders Think About Health Care?

This is a question I've been seeing a lot on facebook (cut and pasted from foxnews.com probably) , but I have a better question ...

How would they have an opinion of it and if they did, who cares?

There's three main reasons that I pose this question:

1) In the founders' day, there was really no such thing as health care as we know it today.

Get sick? You die.
Get cancer? You die.
TB? You most likely die at some point. Maybe some time in the solarium will help a little.
Routine issue like burst appendix? You die.

In other words, health care expense wasn't much of an issue because medical science was for the most part unable to keep you alive if you had any kind of serious disease or health emergency.

There was no premium or co-pay, no deductible to worry about. You just had to make sure you could pray hard if an evil demon gave you 'the fever' or a case of melancholy.


2) The question 'What would the founders think?' is a weighted question that implies that anything that costs money (taxes) is an infringement on the liberty of the people.

While I understand this reasoning (no taxation without representation), the founders really felt that liberty was protection from government intrusion on your life (seizing your property, not allowing free expression, discriminating against religion etc.).

Their opposition to a standing army (Jefferson and the radicals at least) came from the fear that the army would overthrow the civilian government and force its will on the people, not due to taxes being increased.


3) If somehow the founders were transported into our world with its health care concerns, they certainly did not think as a block.

Some founders like Washington were reluctant to rebel against their own country and did so only because they felt something had gone wrong with the empire to make it 'less good' than it once was.

Others like Jefferson wanted an entire new society in the new world to spring forth and throw off the yoke of tyranny, almost a milder version of the French Revolution.

Still, there were moderates like Adams and Madison that fell somewhere in the middle.

So it seems naive to think they would have all been on the same page, even if they had been transported to our time and gained an understanding of the trials and tribulations of our longer and more expensive lives.

Unless of course, you're the Texas school board, then you can simply remove the founders you don't agree with from the history books.