GOP congressman says fewer people with health insurance is a ‘good thing’

Republican efforts to build a more laissez-faire health system are “doomed to fail,” conservative health policy writer Philip Klein admitted in a candid column last month, unless they are willing to state an uncomfortable truth: Republicans must acknowledge that they “don’t believe that it is the job of the federal government to guarantee that everybody has health insurance.”

A handful of GOP lawmakers are now taking up Klein’s charge — with one of them even claiming that a Republican plan that leads to a higher national uninsurance rate would be a good thing.

“If the numbers drop,” Rep. Mike Burgess (R-TX) said Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, “I would say that’s a good thing.” He went on to argue that more people without health care would be a positive thing for the United States because it would mean that “we’ve restored personal liberty in this country.”

More here.

You can have the personal liberty to just die already when you get sick! Say what????