Politics & Power Quote by Tammy Bruce

Tammy Bruce’s line is built less to persuade than to prosecute. It stages a moral trial in which “the courts” aren’t referees of constitutional rights but villains handing out luxuries to the undeserving. The rhetoric does its work by stacking the deck: “murderers, rapists” upfront, “maliciously break our social contract” as motive, then the coup de grace - “health care that most working Americans can’t afford.” The listener is invited to skip policy complexity and go straight to anger.

The subtext is a zero-sum story of citizenship. Health care becomes a prize you earn through moral behavior and economic contribution, not a baseline protection. The phrase “social contract” borrows the language of civic philosophy to smuggle in a punitive worldview: break the rules, forfeit care. It also quietly recasts prisons as places where criminals are “rewarded,” a common populist frame that turns bureaucratic obligations (state custody entails medical responsibility) into moral insult.

Context matters because this argument thrives in moments when health care feels scarce and humiliatingly expensive. Rather than indicting a system that leaves “working Americans” priced out, the quote redirects resentment downward - toward incarcerated people - and upward at courts enforcing rights. The most revealing move is the ending: “condemning good people to death.” It’s a deliberately maximal claim, transforming unequal access into a death sentence authored by judges, not by markets, lawmakers, or insurers. The intent is political triage: shift the debate from coverage to deservingness, and from reform to retribution.