Srs Bizness Post. Health Care. Sorta.
Please feel free to skip the following. I will not judge you. This IS, after all, a primarily fannish journal. As a general rule, I tend not to post or comment on RL issues, but I've hit the point where I feel like I need to say something just to get it off my chest.
I am Canadian. I'm really sick of people slagging on the Canadian medical system. But this post isn't even really about that, except I do have to say: omg stfu already. I know it has its flaws. EVERY SYSTEM HAS FLAWS. All I can say on the subject is that I had a medical emergency earlier this year that involved surgery and an overnight hospital stay. The total sum that cost me is ZERO. I paid ZERO DOLLARS out of my pocket. By the end of 2009, I will have paid $260 total in premiums for my government health insurance. I have no extended health insurance beyond that, either personally or from my work. $260, you guys. Now, if you want to be picky, I haven't really visited a doctor in the two/three-ish years prior to that. If you want to add those three years up, that's about $1550 that I've paid (I used to have to pay more for premiums for a "Twig is stupid" reason). I'm pretty sure I would've had to pay a great deal more than that if I'd gone through the same deal as an uninsured American.
But that's anecdotal data, blah blah, it doesn't count. And I said this post isn't about that.
What troubles me, more than the rampant misinformation and fear -- and those ARE pretty offensive already -- is the attitude that I've seen from a great number of people, even from Livejournal folks, who tend to be more liberal than your average folks.
The bootstrap mentality.
I have worked hard. I have never gotten sick. I do everything to take care of myself. Why should I have to pay for other people's mistakes and carelessness. Why should I have to part with my hard-earned money for other people's laziness.
I agree it sucks when your money is taken from you to be given, perhaps, to those whom you feel are undeserving. Maybe it is not your personal responsibility to take care of the unfortunate, but it is a social responsibility, as a human being living in this world, in this society. If $100 is taken from your paycheck, and $90 of that goes to those goddamn lazy bums but $10 will keep a "good" person from illness and death, would you rather let that person die than allow those "undeserving" from profiting off you? And in reality, it isn't even like that. Just as the news speak endlessly of violence and never of kindness, so do we only hear of that welfare cheat, that unemployment fraud. I don't know what the percentage is, but it can't be the majority. So you'd let the majority good suffer just to punish a minority?
And truly, to those of the bootstrap mentality: did you delivery yourself from your mother? Did you build by your own hands the vehicles that brought you home? Did you pave the roads that take you to school, to work? Do you deliver your letters personally to their destination? Did you lay the wires for your electricity? Did you self-teach the words you speak and write?
Everything you do in this life is not a deed that's accomplished purely by yourself only. Every step you take, every drop of water you drink, they are possible because of other people. Countless invisible others have thanklessly helped you to where you are today, WITHOUT judgement on the kind of person that you are. How can you say you will not help others in kind?
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
I am Canadian. I'm really sick of people slagging on the Canadian medical system. But this post isn't even really about that, except I do have to say: omg stfu already. I know it has its flaws. EVERY SYSTEM HAS FLAWS. All I can say on the subject is that I had a medical emergency earlier this year that involved surgery and an overnight hospital stay. The total sum that cost me is ZERO. I paid ZERO DOLLARS out of my pocket. By the end of 2009, I will have paid $260 total in premiums for my government health insurance. I have no extended health insurance beyond that, either personally or from my work. $260, you guys. Now, if you want to be picky, I haven't really visited a doctor in the two/three-ish years prior to that. If you want to add those three years up, that's about $1550 that I've paid (I used to have to pay more for premiums for a "Twig is stupid" reason). I'm pretty sure I would've had to pay a great deal more than that if I'd gone through the same deal as an uninsured American.
But that's anecdotal data, blah blah, it doesn't count. And I said this post isn't about that.
What troubles me, more than the rampant misinformation and fear -- and those ARE pretty offensive already -- is the attitude that I've seen from a great number of people, even from Livejournal folks, who tend to be more liberal than your average folks.
The bootstrap mentality.
I have worked hard. I have never gotten sick. I do everything to take care of myself. Why should I have to pay for other people's mistakes and carelessness. Why should I have to part with my hard-earned money for other people's laziness.
I agree it sucks when your money is taken from you to be given, perhaps, to those whom you feel are undeserving. Maybe it is not your personal responsibility to take care of the unfortunate, but it is a social responsibility, as a human being living in this world, in this society. If $100 is taken from your paycheck, and $90 of that goes to those goddamn lazy bums but $10 will keep a "good" person from illness and death, would you rather let that person die than allow those "undeserving" from profiting off you? And in reality, it isn't even like that. Just as the news speak endlessly of violence and never of kindness, so do we only hear of that welfare cheat, that unemployment fraud. I don't know what the percentage is, but it can't be the majority. So you'd let the majority good suffer just to punish a minority?
And truly, to those of the bootstrap mentality: did you delivery yourself from your mother? Did you build by your own hands the vehicles that brought you home? Did you pave the roads that take you to school, to work? Do you deliver your letters personally to their destination? Did you lay the wires for your electricity? Did you self-teach the words you speak and write?
Everything you do in this life is not a deed that's accomplished purely by yourself only. Every step you take, every drop of water you drink, they are possible because of other people. Countless invisible others have thanklessly helped you to where you are today, WITHOUT judgement on the kind of person that you are. How can you say you will not help others in kind?
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.