I'm really just sick of discussing this health care bill already. Yeah, it passed. Cool. But we've been talking about it for, counting the campaigns, three years. I'm sick of it. But what people are actually saying about it fascinates me (in some horrifying train-wreck sorta way).
Somehow it's a perfectly acceptable point of view to balance people dying with concern that the federal government is having more "involvement" in your daily life. How does that equation make any sense whatsoever? Hey libertarians and wingnuts adopting libertarian rhetoric: you're paying a fine if you're not insured for the simple reason that if you don't get insurance everyone else's rates go up, meaning fewer people who want to be insured can be and MORE PEOPLE WILL DIE. (I intend the capitalization not as a scare tactic, but to point out very clearly what you're arguing against.) I love how Alan Grayson got shit for pointing this fact out on the House floor, too.
But this is what happens when you have a dysfunctional media so focused on gossip and process rather than substantive effects, where Politico's EIC is the newest member of the Pulitzer committee. Laid bare, that is what this bill amounts to. How is this even a discussion?
Perhaps in the extreme, certain deaths are acceptable in the name of liberty. Hell, Patrick Henry certainly thought so of his own - who am I to argue? And this is just like the American Revolution, right? Well, except that the King George and the governors could do whatever they wanted, there was no such thing as due process, even the limited democracy we have didn't exist, the majority of the people in this country want this or a stronger bill (even with this slanted, anti-reform headline, 36% + 16% = 52%), and oh, Patrick Henry's quote would be a lot less memorable if it read "Give me liberty and give that other poor schmuck who just got cut off his insurance for preexisting acne and now has pneumonia death."
Some perspective, please.
3 comments:
agreed except for 1 point: we've been talking about HCR for 80+ years, not just 3. i think this is more important than people are willing to recognize. this bill (as many issues as there are with it - and there are *many*) is one of the most significant social safety net policy reforms in the history of the country.
I like your blog. And I liked this post a lot. We've been talking about HCR for 100+ years really: the Socialist Party raised the issue in 1904, and the date that I've seen most commonly cited is 1912, when Roosevelt ran as a member of the Progressive (Bull Moose) Party and included on the platform (which, it might be noted, also included women's suffrage) an early version of mandatory health insurance. This early version wouldn't have covered everyone, only people who worked in industry (the idea being that those who worked in factories needed protection from injury).
Thanks! Hopefully you continue to enjoy our rants (I mean, well thought out, substantive discussion...).
And yeah, that's a good point you both made. HCR has been a tthe table forever, and these arguments you're hearing against it are the same arguments you heard against the entire New Deal. But I suppose, since that's when universal health care started being discussed, it only makes sense.
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