Socialized health care for all!

[Himu]

You guys get to be more like Holland, everybody likes to be like Holland.

I was playing Modern Warfare 2 with some guys from Holland last night, who apparently have had the game for days. Some irate American thought they were nerds or jerks that broke street date, and they responded with, "We're from Holland, jackass!"

So I responded: "Yeah, they've got universal healthcare AND Modern Warfare 2 already."

The American dude got so pissed.

[Tauntaun]

  Gettin jewed over the webz. 

[Oblivion]

After a conversation with my roommate, I think some more light was shed on the rationale of some of these people opposed to things like the public option.


Me: So it seems the house passed one of their health care bills.
Him: Oh, great. More entitlements for messicans and ghetto trash paid for by my fucking tax dollars! I knew this shit would happen with that socialist oreo in power. (the 'oreo' is Obama, I assume, due to him being both black and white. You know, like an oreo, I guess.)
Me: Well, not so thinly veiled racism aside, you don't have to worry, this won't be costing you anything.
Him: It won't?
Me: Nope. The public option is supposed to be self sustaining. It's covered by premiums people pay into it, and like the name sounds, it's optional.
Him: Oh. Well, they shouldn't have access to it anyway.
Me: Why not? It's not costing you anything.
Him: Cause I don't want to turn this country into a welfare state.
Me: You'd rather prefer things would stay as they are now, even if this new proposal won't cost you a dime.
Him: Yeah.
Me: But if someone has to go to the emergency room and they don't have insurance, the cost is passed on to you.
Him: Don't care. Just as long as the government doesn't help them.
Me: I....see.

So it suddenly hit me. It's not about the money. For some of these people, it was never about the money. These people loath the idea of helping out people that they don't think deserve it, even if it doesn't cost them a cent. To put it more simply, these people don't want to pay to make sure people can get health insurance, but they will pay to make sure they can't.

[Rman]

That's some grade A rhetorical flair on behalf of your roommate.

[The Fake Shemp]

To be fair, that's not entirely true. If you don't get any insurance, you will be hit with a penalty (it'll be a fee and not jail time, as some Tea Party activists are raving about) according to the House bill.

There is a large portion of this country that has a disconnect with the truly poor. I think it's easy to blame them for their own problems, I mean, they didn't go to college or a trade school or anything! They're gutter trash, leeching off our taxes!

... but we fail to put things in context, and white upper middle class citizens in particular have some kind of inability to understand that poverty is a pretty vicious cycle. The only thing we gain from letting poor people fend for themselves is more poor people.

Am I thrilled about spending a trillion dollars when the government has fucked up spending our money beyond belief? Not really. But unlike costly foreign wars, bank bailouts and the like, I would rather put our taxes to something of real, social value - like health care. And if we don't do it now, we'll be stuck with a bill ten times the sticker price down the line, when an entire generation without proper preventative health care and poor nutrition are eligible for Medicare.

I don't think any bill that makes it through Congress will be a cure all. In all honesty, whatever passes will likely be pretty awful. But it'll force Congress to fix and they won't be able to pull it from the table. Maybe it is a single-payer system, maybe it is a total overhaul of the private insurance system, maybe it's both.

But it's at least a step.