Category: Politics

When I was a kid, I believed if a person was shot by a criminal, their treatment would be paid for.  I wasn’t sure how this would work, but I reasoned it would be unjust for them to have to pay for the misdeeds of another. As has turned out with most of my beliefs about American justice, I was wrong. Shooting victims are usually presented with the bills for their treatment and unless you are a presidential candidate, being shot comes with a high cost.

Dr. Joseph Sakran, who had been shot in his youth, co-authored a study of what shooting victims are charged for their treatment. Since gunshot wounds range from relatively grazing wounds to massive damage, the costs vary greatly. While the average is $5,000 it can be as high as $100,000. While such costs are often covered by insurance, uninsured or underinsured shooting victims become victims again: they must either pay or pass on the cost. When the patient cannot pay, their credit can be damaged and the cost is passed on in the form of premium increases. There can be costs beyond the initial medical bills, such as ongoing medical bills, the loss of income, and psychological harm.

In addition to medical expenses, there are also the costs of the police response, the impact on employers, and the dollar value of those who are killed rather than wounded (and dying in the hospital does not automatically clear the bill). While estimating the exact cost is difficult, a mass shooting like the Pulse Nightclub shooting will probably end up costing almost $400 million. While mass shootings and assassination attempts get the attention of the media, gunshot wounds are a regular occurrence in the United States with an estimated cost of $600 million per day. While some might dispute the numbers, it is indisputable that getting shot is expensive and it would be rational to reduce the number of shootings and address the high cost of being shot.

While the rational approach to such a massive health crisis would be to undertake a scientific study to find solutions, the 1996 Dickey Amendment bans the use of federal funding for gun research. There is also very little good data about gun injuries and death, and this is no accident. Efforts to improve the collection of data are routinely blocked by such things as the Dickey Amendment. Efforts to impose more gun control, even when there is overwhelming public support for such things as universal background checks, are consistently blocked. While this shows how much say the people have in this “democracy”, it also shows that trying to address the high cost of getting shot by reducing shootings is unlikely to succeed. As such the most practical option involves finding ways to offset the medical costs to victims. While victims can bring civil suits, this is not a reliable and effective way to ensure that the medical expenses are covered. After all, shooters are rarely wealthy enough to pay all the bills and are sometimes killed.

Some victims have set up GoFundMe pages to get donations to pay their medical bills and this has become a common practice for many medical expenses. One problem with this approach is that it is not reliable and depends heavily on luck and being appealing to the crowd. There is also the moral problem of people needing to beg so they can pay the bills arising from getting shot. I have two proposals to address this problem.

My first proposal is that gun owners be required to purchase a modestly priced insurance policy that is analogous to vehicle insurance. In the United States, people are usually required to have insurance to cover the damage they might inflict while operating a dangerous piece of machinery. This helps pool the risk (as insurance is supposed to do) and puts the cost on the operators rather than on those who they might harm. The same should apply to guns. They are dangerous machines that can do considerable harm and it makes sense that the owners should bear the cost of the insurance. Naturally, as with vehicles, owners can also be victims.

It could be objected that owning a firearm is a right and hence the state cannot impose such a requirement. The easy and obvious reply is that the right to keep and bear arms is a negative right rather than a positive right. A positive right is one in which a person is entitled to be provided with the means to use that right (such as how people are provided with free ballots when they go to vote). A negative right means the person must provide the means of exercising their right, but it is (generally) wrong to prevent them from exercising that right. So, just as the state is not required to ensure that people get free guns and ammunition or free TV or radio time to exercise their freedom of speech, it is not required to allow gun ownership without insurance, provided that the requirement does not impose an unreasonable infringement on the right.

Another reply is that rights do not free a person from responsibility. In the case of speech, people cannot simply say anything without there even being consequences. In the case of gun insurance, people would be acting in a responsible manner. They would be balancing their rights with a rational amount of responsibility. To refuse to have such insurance is to insist on rights without responsibility, something conservatives usually pretend to hate. As such, both liberals and conservatives should approve of this idea.

My second proposal, which is consistent with the first, is that there be a modest state fee added to the cost of firearms and ammunition. This money would go into a state pool to help pay the medical expenses of the uninsured who are injured in shootings. Yes, I know that this money would probably be misused by many states. The justification is that the people who buy guns that could hurt people should bear the cost for the medical expenses of those who are hurt. People already pay sales taxes on these items; this would merely allocate some money to help offset the cost of people exercising their second amendment rights. To go back to the vehicle analogy, it makes sense to add a fee onto the cost of gas to pay for roads and other infrastructure, that way the people who are using it are helping to pay for it. Likewise for guns.

An obvious objection is that this fee would be paid by many people who will never engage in a gun crime. This is a reasonable concern, analogous to other concerns about paying into anything that one is not directly responsible for. There are two reasonable replies. One is that the funds generated could cover uninsured medical expenses involving any firearm crime or accident and anyone can have an accident with a gun. Another is the responsibility argument: while you or I, as gun owners, will probably never engage in a gun crime, being able to exercise our right to own guns allows people who will engage in gun crimes to engage in those crimes. For example, the person who tried to kill Trump was operating under the protection of the same gun rights that protect all gun owners up until the moment he started firing. This fee would be our share of the responsibility for allowing the threat of gun violence to endanger everyone in the United States. Such a modest fee would be a very small price to pay for having such a dangerous right. Otherwise, we would be selfishly expecting everyone else to bear the cost of our rights, which would not be right. So, to appeal to principled conservatives, this would be a way for taking responsibility for one’s rights. As people love to say, freedom isn’t free.

 

The heat and humidity of my adopted state of Florida are not just uncomfortable but dangerous. From 2010 to 2020 Florida had 215 reported heat-related deaths but these deaths have increased 95% from 2010 to 2022. This is what would be expected, given that climate change has led to ever warmer summer temperatures in Florida. In my own experience, running or doing outside work in the summer is brutal. As such, it makes sense that recently Miami-Dade County had proposed requiring that construction and farm workers get 10-minute breaks in the shade for every two hours worked outside. In response, the Republican controlled Florida legislature and Governor DeSantis rushed into action, passing and signing HB433. This law makes all local heat protection measures “void and prohibited.” Instead, the state standards would apply, although none exist. Florida is, of course, subject to Federal OSHA requirements (state and local workers are excluded) and these require employers to keep workplaces free of recognized hazards that cause or are likely to cause death or serious harm and this includes heat dangers.

This provides another good example of the inconsistency in the professed principles of the Republican party. After all, Republicans usually stress how they support states’ rights against the federal government and local rights against state government. However, Republicans do not seem to believe in this principle. Rather, their position on bigger versus smaller governments seems to depend entirely on which level of government is doing what they want. For example, since the Democrats could (but will not) pass a federal abortion law, the Republican’s profess the principle that the states should decide on this issue.

But the party wants to put a federal abortion ban in place when Trump is re-elected. When that happens, they will employ their stock argument for when they want the bigger government entity to decide, which is to contend that allowing local control will create a patchwork of laws and regulations and that it is better to have uniform laws. As HB433 and other example show, they only apply this principle when the uniform laws are the laws they want. When the uniform law is one they do not like, they profess a love of local governance. That is, their principle is that they want the law to be what they like and not what they do not like. Being honest about this might look bad, hence they present the illusion of having a principle in their arguments and rhetoric. But I often wonder if they even need to do this. The fact that they take time to profess a principle they clearly do not follow suggests that they think they need to do so. This might be because they think it will fool those who care about the principle but somehow do not notice that they do not follow it. Alternatively, it might be aimed at allowing rationalization. For example, a Republican voter can tell themselves that this law is good because it makes the law uniform and avoids a patchwork. Then, when the same voter hears Trump say that abortion should be decided by the states because local governments should decide, they can tell themselves that this is good and true. It seems simpler to just be honest, but there is probably some reason why Republicans persist in professing principles they clearly do not believe.

The defense of the bill also provides another good example of how Republicans argue against regulations aimed at protecting people from harm inflicted by businesses. Republican Rep. Tiffany Esposito ably presented the stock jobs argument of the Republican party: “This is very much a people-centric bill. If we want to talk about Floridians thriving, they do that by having good job opportunities. And if you want to talk about health and wellness, and you want to talk about how we can make sure that all Floridians are healthy, you do that by making sure that they have a good job. And in order to provide good jobs, we need to not put businesses out of business.” The structure of the jobs argument is this:

 

Premise 1. Something is proposed to protect the health and wellness of consumers or workers from harm caused by a business.

Premise 2. It is claimed that health and wellness come from having a good job.

Premise 3. Business must be in business to provide good jobs.

Premise 4. This something would put business out of business.

Conclusion: This something must be prevented.

 

On the face of it, the reasoning has a certain appeal in that if it were true that something intended to protect health and well being would have the opposite effect, then it should not be done. But are these claims true? The second premise can be seen as true because health insurance is linked to employment and because you generally need a job to get food, shelter, and other survival essentials. Presumably a good job would provide benefits and adequate pay. The third premise is true. The fourth premise is the most critical. Republicans almost always claim that regulating business would put business out of business, despite that fact that businesses have been both regulated and profitable since the start of the United States. This is not to deny that there can be bad regulations, but simply saying that something would put businesses out of business is not enough to prove this is true. For example, the 10-minute break rule would not put a business out of business. In fact, allowing such breaks would be more likely to increase productivity of workers since it would allow them time to recover somewhat from the heat.

But it might be objected that some local governments might put requirements into effect that would put business out of business and hence this law is needed to prevent that from happening. My first reply is to point out that another professed Republican principle is that they are for small government, and this would mean not expanding government by creating more laws unless there is a clear need. But the proposals seem quite reasonable and unlikely to destroy businesses. Now if some county went rogue and started a war on capitalism, then perhaps such a law would be needed. My second reply is to note that Florida essentially did nothing about the increasing danger presented by heat and is only complying with the OSHA requirements that amount to businesses mostly not being allowed to kill or harm workers. That is, Florida is doing the least it can possibly do to address the increasing danger presented by heat and ensuring that no one in the state can do more. While this is presented as pro-business and “not having more heat protection is good for the workers, actually” it also seems to be an act of cruelty, which is consistent with what seems to be a true principle of the Republican party, namely cruelty for the sake of cruelty.