Cracked.com weighs in on Health Care

[Vidi]

The following is from this article

The 4 Stupidest Things People Love Getting Offended About | Cracked.com

This is not about Obamacare exactly, it's about not being dead. Obamacare is one example of many health care initiatives countries all around the world employ as part of what those nations offer their citizens by way of security and protection. Health care is a thing that protects you from dying. But holy shit do some people really want to see some death.

Do you not want to pay extra taxes or insurance rates? Fine. Do you already have health coverage? Awesome. But at the end of the day, there are kids with leukemia, parents with Parkinson's and superheroes with Only One Thigh Sclerosis who maybe can't afford to go to a hospital. Or they go and their insurance says "Sorry, annual cap," or maybe lifetime cap, if it's an untreatable condition. Or God forbid a pre-existing condition that will then limit them from coverage at all. Health care in America sucks, it really does. Don't feel bad about that, it's like saying John from Cincinnati was a crappy HBO show. HBO is still good, it just had shit on it. It happens.

Despite the fact that access to health care stops people from dying and/or living with festering head wounds and the like, the big critique is how awful and socialist such a thing is. People have even said that they're going to leave the country because of it and move to someplace like Canada. The people who say this are dumb as damp burlap sacks full of shit, mind you, but they're saying it enough that the media is covering it.

Libertarian-leaning people don't like the government stepping in and giving them insurance because they like to be difficult. That's really the gist of it, and you can try to argue differently, but come on. No one can say, with a straight face, that if they have a heart attack they'll be pissed off that the government forced an insurance on them that helped them survive that heart attack. Damn, I'm alive! Now I can get revenge!

Are there good arguments against a health care mandate on paper? Sure. You can argue points of contract law and precedent, but is any of that any more than sour grapes? It's not like the government wants you to wear genie pants all day, they want to let people go to the damn doctor. All other arguments against it are smokescreens that cover two arguments -- it costs too much and it's a filthy socialist initiative.

Every other developed nation has universal health care. Every one. Because the government and the people they represent see the benefit of not having streets full of lepers. The cost is not unbearable and, in fact, repealing the act would increase the deficit by billions. Hundreds of billions.

So there is no cost argument. It comes down to people not liking the fact that this is perceived as socialist and, in principle, that must be bad. No matter how much good it does, the word sounds bad. If we replaced the word "socialist" with "Robot Rainbow Fucksplosion" and had to listen to Fox News pundits tell us that Obamacare is a Robot Rainbow Fucksplosion policy that means insurance companies have to treat us with basic human dignity, we'd all be in the streets with signs demanding more of it.

So frm now on, socialist will be known as "Robot Rainbow Fucksplosion" and Libertarians as "difficult"

Enjoy!

 

[midcan5]

America is the land of the individual and freedom, if you picked lower class or poverty level parents that's your own fault, if you selected parents with poor genes or bad combinations of genes that too is your fault, if you live in a polluted area or near a chemical dump, see above.


"We're always saying that “children are our nation’s most valuable resource.” Unfortunately, we don’t behave as if we believe it. Between 2000 and 2010, the number of children living in poverty in America increased by 41 percent, and now includes nearly one-quarter of our kids. Growing up in poverty is bad. It leads to lower graduation rates (a third of these children will not graduate from high school); lower incomes (nearly half will still be living in poverty at age 35); and lower life expectancy (by about eight years)." Share the Wealth - NYTimes.com

 

[midcan5]

No comments?

I am finishing Waldron's book and thought this review comment interesting.

"So consider: elderly people of limited means in the United States who are dependent on Medicare for their basic well-being—there are tens of millions of them—are rather clearly “vulnerable people.” Why, then, is it not equally problematic when a powerful congressman, Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, advocates effectively eliminating the program that benefits these vulnerable people, indeed, keeps them alive? “Hatred,” after all, is not the issue as Waldron says, and no one, I assume, thinks Rep. Ryan “hates” the elderly or the poor. He may simply be stupid, or in thrall to an ideology, or defective in empathetic capacity, or beholden to special interests; whatever the explanation, it is clear that his proposals, if enacted, would eventually result in elderly people in need being unable to afford essential healthcare." Brian Leiter review of 'The Harm in Hate Speech' by Jeremy Waldron, Waldron on the Regulation of Hate Speech by Brian Leiter :: SSRN

The book makes some interesting arguments, but as Brian Leiter notes, it opens a Pandora box of issues. But maybe law has always tackled that dark box? I do find it interesting how certain forms of speech or rhetorical linguistics today are preempted by the right or by the wingnut media - all of a sudden everything becomes a loss of some glorious past or some glorious future.

"You must bear in mind that the language-game is so to say something unpredictable. I mean; it is not based on grounds. It is not reasonable (or unreasonable). It is there--like our life." Wittgenstein

 

[BDBoop]

And in other news;

/sob

"Corporations are people too, my friend!! Think of the poor hospitals!"