(no subject)
Okay, let's have this discussion once and for all and get it over with.
All of you out there angry because the Obama healthcare plan adds more low income people to Medicare/Medicaid and mandates individuals to have health insurance need to stop and think. I'm going to take the arguments I've heard and show you how this law should have been passed years ago.
First of all every President of the United States, both Republican and Democrat, has proposed some version of this exact plan. If you had more time than I do, you could go back and look it up. I'm sure someone has put this information up on the interwebs for Google to find it for you. It's not an argument I've ever had to argue so I'm putting it out there as fact.
Argument one: It's going to cost more of my hard earned tax dollars.
No, it's not. Once upon a time, there was a President named Ronald Reagan. In 1986, he signed into law the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) as part of Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA, you may have heard of it when you got laid off in 2008). The EMTALA says that anyone who walks into an emergency room must be treated whether they have a means to pay for their treatment or not. If one of your guild members accidentally embeds their mace of smiting into your forehead, the doctors and nurses in the emergency room are required by law to remove it even if you don't have a saving throw or major medical insurance.
The problem with this law is now, not only are people with life threatening injuries and illnesses using the emergency room for care, but people who have the flu or an infection that could easily be treated in a doctor's office are showing up at the emergency room. Emergency room treatment costs more than a doctor's office visit. Every time someone shows up in the emergency room and doesn't pay, the cost of that treatment has to be shifted to paying customers in the form of higher premiums and, you guessed it folks, tax subsidies.
If these people without a mace in their forehead had insurance through Medicare or Medicaid or had a low cost insurance plan of their own, the costs for EVERYONE would go down. Doctors would get paid more making them happier. The hospitals would have more money for stuff like making the food not suck. The doctor's offices would be taking all the runny noses and ear infections freeing the emergency personnel for actual emergencies.
Refuse to believe all that makes sense and I'm going to roll my dice again.
Argument two: I don't like the government telling me I have to have insurance. This is America, gosh nabbit! Land of the Free!
My answer to that: Car insurance. I know I don't want to buy it, but if I get pulled over and I don't have a pretty little card in my wallet from State Farm I'll have to buy a saddle and ride my dog to work for a while.
Argument two part a: That's different. Car insurance protects my property from someone else acting like an idiot on the road.
Glossing over the fact that you think your Suburban is more important than the life of another human being, let's play what if:
I'm a young, uninsured adult. I'm too old for being on my parents plan and the only places hiring right now don't have health insurance or that insurance doesn't kick in until I've worked at the company for three blue moons and an equinox. It's a crappy job. It's hourly. It's minimum wage because there aren't many positions available to someone with a B.A. in English with a minor in Creative Woods. It's non-union and the boss is a jerk who likes to fire people just like his favorite pin up boy, Mittens Rmoney. If I miss a minute of work, I'll get fired and lose my timeshare of the bottom bunk bed in the apartment I got with five of my buddies (but don't tell the landlord because there's only supposed to be two living there).
I've had a really bad cold for weeks. I cough. I hack. My nose has a river of snot pouring from it that makes Niagara Falls look like a dripping faucet. My head is killing me and I haven't been able to look left or right since my neck went stiff. I always get a stiff neck when I have a fever so I'm pushing through because I can't miss work and it'll go away eventually, right?
I get on the elevator with you. You, of the full medical coverage and only one roommate where you eat healthy food instead of pizza every meal and don't share a shower with people who only clean when their mom's coming over to visit.
I'm coughing and hacking. I wipe my nose on my hand then hit the button for the same floor you're headed for. The germs are practically visible floating around in the small cramped space. I have meningitis, but I don't know it because I can't afford to go to the doctor.
Now you have meningitis too. So does that nice roommate. And your girlfriend because you kissed her before going to lay down because your head feels like it's going to split. Your roommate left for work and now everyone at his office has been exposed to meningitis too - a potentially fatal illness that is treatable.
See where I'm going with this? You buy car insurance in case some idiot can't wait to text "your mom" until he stops at the stop light, but you won't agree to a single payer healthcare system so you don't get meningitis from an uninsured stranger and die.
You think I'm exaggerating, but am I really? We need affordable healthcare for all and we need it now.
All of you out there angry because the Obama healthcare plan adds more low income people to Medicare/Medicaid and mandates individuals to have health insurance need to stop and think. I'm going to take the arguments I've heard and show you how this law should have been passed years ago.
First of all every President of the United States, both Republican and Democrat, has proposed some version of this exact plan. If you had more time than I do, you could go back and look it up. I'm sure someone has put this information up on the interwebs for Google to find it for you. It's not an argument I've ever had to argue so I'm putting it out there as fact.
Argument one: It's going to cost more of my hard earned tax dollars.
No, it's not. Once upon a time, there was a President named Ronald Reagan. In 1986, he signed into law the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) as part of Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA, you may have heard of it when you got laid off in 2008). The EMTALA says that anyone who walks into an emergency room must be treated whether they have a means to pay for their treatment or not. If one of your guild members accidentally embeds their mace of smiting into your forehead, the doctors and nurses in the emergency room are required by law to remove it even if you don't have a saving throw or major medical insurance.
The problem with this law is now, not only are people with life threatening injuries and illnesses using the emergency room for care, but people who have the flu or an infection that could easily be treated in a doctor's office are showing up at the emergency room. Emergency room treatment costs more than a doctor's office visit. Every time someone shows up in the emergency room and doesn't pay, the cost of that treatment has to be shifted to paying customers in the form of higher premiums and, you guessed it folks, tax subsidies.
If these people without a mace in their forehead had insurance through Medicare or Medicaid or had a low cost insurance plan of their own, the costs for EVERYONE would go down. Doctors would get paid more making them happier. The hospitals would have more money for stuff like making the food not suck. The doctor's offices would be taking all the runny noses and ear infections freeing the emergency personnel for actual emergencies.
Refuse to believe all that makes sense and I'm going to roll my dice again.
Argument two: I don't like the government telling me I have to have insurance. This is America, gosh nabbit! Land of the Free!
My answer to that: Car insurance. I know I don't want to buy it, but if I get pulled over and I don't have a pretty little card in my wallet from State Farm I'll have to buy a saddle and ride my dog to work for a while.
Argument two part a: That's different. Car insurance protects my property from someone else acting like an idiot on the road.
Glossing over the fact that you think your Suburban is more important than the life of another human being, let's play what if:
I'm a young, uninsured adult. I'm too old for being on my parents plan and the only places hiring right now don't have health insurance or that insurance doesn't kick in until I've worked at the company for three blue moons and an equinox. It's a crappy job. It's hourly. It's minimum wage because there aren't many positions available to someone with a B.A. in English with a minor in Creative Woods. It's non-union and the boss is a jerk who likes to fire people just like his favorite pin up boy, Mittens Rmoney. If I miss a minute of work, I'll get fired and lose my timeshare of the bottom bunk bed in the apartment I got with five of my buddies (but don't tell the landlord because there's only supposed to be two living there).
I've had a really bad cold for weeks. I cough. I hack. My nose has a river of snot pouring from it that makes Niagara Falls look like a dripping faucet. My head is killing me and I haven't been able to look left or right since my neck went stiff. I always get a stiff neck when I have a fever so I'm pushing through because I can't miss work and it'll go away eventually, right?
I get on the elevator with you. You, of the full medical coverage and only one roommate where you eat healthy food instead of pizza every meal and don't share a shower with people who only clean when their mom's coming over to visit.
I'm coughing and hacking. I wipe my nose on my hand then hit the button for the same floor you're headed for. The germs are practically visible floating around in the small cramped space. I have meningitis, but I don't know it because I can't afford to go to the doctor.
Now you have meningitis too. So does that nice roommate. And your girlfriend because you kissed her before going to lay down because your head feels like it's going to split. Your roommate left for work and now everyone at his office has been exposed to meningitis too - a potentially fatal illness that is treatable.
See where I'm going with this? You buy car insurance in case some idiot can't wait to text "your mom" until he stops at the stop light, but you won't agree to a single payer healthcare system so you don't get meningitis from an uninsured stranger and die.
You think I'm exaggerating, but am I really? We need affordable healthcare for all and we need it now.