Ayn Rand Wrote Government's Role and It Was Rugged

There are some interesting things to point out about the story of Ayn Rand and her decision to partake in a single payer health care system like Medicare as well as the New Deal program Social Security.

There's no doubt that if you paid into a service you should receive the benefits, if that's your decision. It appears Rand definitely decided to partake in a system she claimed to despise. But Medicare is not mandatory. It's optional. She didn't have to use it. She was a wealthy woman even into her old age. She could have opted out of the system, purchased her own private plan and lived the life she claimed everyone should. But she didn't. She chose to receive Medicare because, as her social worker and power of attorney makes clear, "[d]octors could cost an awful lot more money than books earn, and she could be totally wiped out by medical bills if she didn’t watch it."

Yes doctors cost a lot of money. Health care, in general cost a lot of money. Even wealthy people like Ayn Rand, if they get sick, oftentimes cannot afford to pay for doctors and treatment. That's the whole point of Medicare. Because health care is so expensive it can wipe out everything you have. This happens every day to millions of people in America. Imagine if you are poor or middle class and get sick. Your financial situation will be much worse than one of the best selling authors of all time that's for sure.

We cannot control when we get sick, and at some point we all will need health care. In the case of Rand, it was all her own doing. She had lung cancer from a two-pack a day smoking habit. Her life of personal freedom, living to do as she pleased led her to get sick and become dependent upon government services. That's not hypocrisy of the system like so many Rand supporters are defending. It is the system. That's what Medicare is there for, to keep the elderly from becoming destitute on medical expenses. The Medicare system does not care if Rand didn't like it. Neither does the system care that she spent her whole life trying to dismantle it. The system is non-discriminatory. Rand proved the system worked. Does her partaking in it negate her philosophy? Not at all. Her partaking in it proved the system is viable and necessary, no matter what she thinks or causes other people to think.  Without Medicare paying for her health care, she would have died penniless and probably without proper treatment.  That's absolutely the purpose of Medicare.  She used it precisely as it was intended.

Furthermore, Medicare had been in existence a mere 9 years before Rand applied. That means, at best, she only paid into the system a very small time, if at all. Therefore, she received way more benefits from it than she ever paid in. That does, in effect, constitute welfare in every way possible and imaginable. This is where the problem occurs in terms of philosophy.

Libertarians have always tried to maintain that earmarks, Social Security benefits, and the like, is merely their money coming back to them. It's when people, namely the poor, who don't pay into the systems receive the same benefits does the self-righteous and self-professed "conservative" right wing complain. However, not only did Rand get money she paid in, she also received lots of other people's money. Yet, again, that was her choice. She didn't have to do it. But because she didn't want to wipe out her fortune, she chose to do something she railed against her whole life.

I see nothing wrong with her decision at all.  I'm not one who thinks Medicare and Social Security are unconstitutional.  In fact, I believe Medicare should be opened up to everyone because the elderly are not the only ones who get sick without the money to cover health care expenses.

Last but not least, why in the world did she use a fake name when signing up if for no other reason than to avoid the stigma of hypocrisy? If there was anyone who could have philosophically argued her way out of being labeled a hypocrite for utilizing the mantles of the American welfare state it was Ayn Rand. Yet she ran and hid using made up names hoping the public would never know. No it's not hypocrisy, I agree. It's the fact that people like Rand aren't against welfare or socialism in the least bit. Like I've been saying forever: They are only against other people besides themselves receiving it, which is way more about self-delusion than hypocrisy.  And that is why her supporters try so hard to make this more about hypocrisy than about government's role when in fact, if Rand's philosophy and life proved anything, it's that government's role is way more a personal matter than Republicans want to admit.