I'm one (at least).

[captainsblog]

At last report, I had 63 friends on Facebook. Something like 40 of them post with any regularity. At least a dozen of those joined me yesterday in posting some variant on this expression of opinion, and feeling:

No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick.

I don't claim that as any scientific measure of public opinion, just as a comforting sign in a troubled time that I am not alone- WE are not alone- in feeling that this astroturfing of sentiment on the other side is not as universal as the media makes it out to be.

I modified the meme that was going around to point my own anger squarely at the majority of "real Americans" who show up at these protests with their lobbyist-written scripts and tips, and terrorize their representatives at town meetings- these teabaggers and so-called Christian patriots who are all angry, almost exclusively white, and primarily old. Older than me, that is- REAL old- and, therefore, already on the "government health care" they've been trained to deplore.

Make no mistake: that health care is not free, you old fools. I'm the one paying for it. If I don't make another dollar in the remaining four months of this year, I will personally write checks through next April 15th including over $2,400 for your Medicare- a program I have no expectation whatsoever of ever receiving a penny of return benefit from. It's that high because I'm self-employed, but if you're still in the workforce, your employer is matching every penny you pay toward this system, as well. All for the benefit of a generation that thinks nothing about smoking, injecting beef jerky and heavy cream into their arteries, ignoring every sound piece of medical advice about reducing the cost of their health care by reducing its causes,

....and they dare tell our elected Representatives that they don't want me, and probably you, to have what they already have.

Fuck 'em.

That wacky old Chicago liberal jblaque, still plainly loopy on painkillers from some health care of his own in the past week, posted a perfectly modest proposal for giving these teabagging idiots exactly what they ask for. As Aladdin once told Jafar, You want the government out of health care? You got it- and everything that goes with it!



I'm finally convinced that I've been wrong about Obama's health care plan all along.

The town hall meetings of the last few weeks may have been an annoyance to some, but to me, they've been an education. Some may have considered them shoutfests — so many tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury signifying nothing, but to me they have been an intellectual feast, the best political science lesson I've had since college.

And I'm now convinced the Republicans are right: The federal government has no business in health care. Every time it puts its fumbling paws anywhere near a stethoscope, it screws things up — and at enormous, exorbitant cost.

There seems to me only one sensible solution to this problem, and that is to get the government out of health care completely. Rip it out, root and branch. Yank it out like you would an inflamed appendix or an abscessed tooth. No temporizing, no halfway measures.

So — to my former opponents on the issue — here's a modest proposal. Let us band together and demand that our lawmakers legislate (and our president sign) a statute that will, within five years...

• Eliminate Medicare. Our senior citizens deserve better than to be subjected to a system created in Washington by venal politicians and administered by incompetent bureaucrats. These are our parents and grandparents we're talking about. Surely if we do away with this government program, there will be private entities clamoring to serve this segment of the market — and at lower prices and with higher quality to boot. Surely.

• Eliminate Medicaid, including its various offshoots for children. There is no reason we should subject the poor — especially poor children — to inferior health care of the sort delivered by the government. Let them find quality health care in the private marketplace, just like their economic betters.

• Eliminate the tax deduction for employer payments of premiums for employee health insurance. Some people will argue that this is not direct government involvement in health care, but what could be more direct — and pernicious — than the government's putting its thumb on the scale to virtually force employers to spend money on health care as opposed to higher employee salaries, or higher executive salaries, or higher dividends for investors, or any of the myriad other things an employer could elect to spend its money on? It is an unconscionable interference in the free market that diminishes the quality of ordinary Americans' lives by propping up sub-par providers of health care.

• Eliminate the veterans health care system. We do our veterans no favor by subjecting to them to a system that, virtually by definition, forces them to accept substandard care. Assuming we have any continuing debt to veterans after their service is over, let's provide them with the freedom to find quality care providers and quality insurers in the private marketplace.

• Eliminate military hospitals and health care facilities. Granted, some percentage of our military personnel will inevitably suffer injuries in the course of their work. But instead of maintaining an expensive and inefficient military (i.e., federal government) system of hospitals and other facilities, let us increase their pay enough so they can buy private insurance. The only "government health care" to which they should be subjected is that which must take place on the battlefield to stabilize them until they can be gotten to an appropriate private provider. No second-rate care for our boys and girls in uniform!

• Eliminate the Indian Health Service and any other such health-provider programs for special populations. Sure, some will argue that the U.S. is "obligated" by "treaties" and other "solemn commitments" to provide health care for Native Americans. But have we not already inflicted enough pain and humiliation on these peoples without now subjecting them to health care at the fumbling hands of government providers? Get the feds out of the picture, and the Indian peoples will no doubt see dramatic improvements in their health care and outcomes.

• Eliminate the office of the Surgeon General. This is a change that is long overdue. How much longer will we subject the American people to medical busybodies on the federal payroll hectoring us about things like the "dangers" of smoking, obesity, unprotected sex? Not only does this agency annoy, but it also is responsible in large measure for the economic devastation of at least one entire American industry: tobacco.

• Eliminate agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and others that claim to do "unbiased, scientific research and evaluation," but really have darker, sinister political agendas and that, in any case, cannot possibly be as helpful and essential as they have hoodwinked so many into believing they are because... well, because they're federal government agencies!

Yes, the greatest service our elected representatives in Washington can do is to get the government out of health care, completely. We'll all breathe easier then, when we're all back in the state of nature...

Who's with me?



Of course, I had to let him know that I was on board with his campaign, but I did point out one shortfall in the argument: Jonathan paid way too little attention to the government being involved in the business of epidemic prevention and control. How can we possibly allow something that important to be left to the whims of government bureaucrats, to decide who gets innoculated and who dies? Especially when we have a perfectly good pharmaceutical industry that will do a far better job of it if there's a profit motive involved!  I then finished my analysis with this proposal of my own:

Why shouldn't they treat acute outbreaks of disease the same way they treat less life-threatening, but chronic ones, by making them profit centers? Surely we can attack these problems in the same way: with pretty, upbeat ad campaigns!

I have a modest example here:

Bubonic plague. It isn't just for medieval serfs anymore. It's come back with a vengeance, but fortunately, there's Repeara. In clinical studies, Repeara permitted plague victims to live a relatively normal life, if a somewhat shorter one, with all the pleasures of 15th century living. Repeara is not for everyone. See a doctor if you can afford one, or a pharmacist or barber if you can't, to see if you are a candidate. Side effects are severe and include foaming at the mouth, painful rectal itch, and a burning desire to read Camus. Tell your doctor if your rat bites become inflamed for more than four hours. In rare cases, remission may inadvertently ensue. Repeara- medicine from the good old days.

So now that Congress is going back to work, be sure to let them know you don't want me to send in those 2,400 Benjamins. I'm sure you old coots can afford one of the many competitive plans you'll be offered, plus there are always emergency rooms for you if you get sick. And 2,400 bucks? Hey- party at my house!

Comments

[khuckie.livejournal.com]

Here's one to make you even more angry. The idiots are now freaking the heck out over Obama addressing schoolchildren next week. He's obviously going to indoctrinate them into his evilllll socialist ways by telling them to stay in school and work hard. The nerve! So in retaliation, the teabagger crowd is calling for a parentally approved skip day to protect their dumb children, and letting them miss a day of school so they can be even stupider. Of course, let's not forget that Reagan and Poppy Bush did the exact same damn thing, except in their speeches, they did try to force policy on the innocents. But that's okay. They were white dudes.