Tag: health
The thing that gets me is Republicans think we want to “play it safe” as some sort of scam. Just because we believe in science and medicine, while you prefer to pray to imaginary people in the sky doesn’t make us the nuts. But let’s say your deity were real: Don’t you think they’d tell you they created ALL humans, including the doctors and scientists, and that they gave them the gifts of healing and knowledge to protect the rest of us?
You act as if we want you to get sick and die from this. We want the opposite of that (unlike how most of you think of us). We want you to be safe. We don’t have to agree with your politics or even like you personally to not want you to suffer or even die from this. It’s called being human, and compassionate. We have empathy for you. The struggle you’re going through, we’re all going through, but we’re willing to do it to prevent needless deaths. And when you minimize that by saying things like more people die in car accidents, you miss the point. You can choose to not drive or be in a car and avoid that risk. You can’t avoid this. You can lower your risk greatly, though, and lower it for everyone else by doing what they’re asking us to do.
And if those models are correct, three times as many of our people could die in a year if we do this wrong than died in World War 2. That’s a lot more than people who die in car crashes or any other way. So we get pissed when you sit there telling other people they need to follow our laws, like illegals, but when you have towns and states passing laws to protect us and you say you’re not going to obey them, you put us all at much greater risk, and look like hypocrites in the process, as if laws are for other people, not you.
So, again, if you die by your own hands, as long as you don’t risk other people’s lives, I’m fine with that. More oxygen and food for the rest of us. But I’m not wishing it on you. I’m hoping you do the right thing. I’m hoping you stay safe, and keep your family safe. I’m hoping.
“While employers pay most of the costs of coverage, according to the survey, workers’ average contribution is now $6,000 for a family plan. That’s just their share of upfront premiums, and doesn’t include co-payments, deductibles and other forms of cost-sharing once they need care.” —That’s if you have an employer. If you’re self-employed you either pick a catastrophic plan, a bronze plan, neither of which cover very much, or pay a LOT more for Silver or Gold. Even then with Silver and Gold most things aren’t covered and you run into that deductible.
Here’s what I don’t get: places like Canada their health care costs are a tenth of what ours are for the same or better care. The US ranks around 20th in the world for quality of health care, so that idea republicans have that we have the best care simply isn’t true. How you “feel” doesn’t reflect reality. Like we all think our education is the best in the world, and that isn’t true, either. Both are very good, but how do countries with much longer life expectancies, with higher qualities of life, and more satisfaction manage to do it? Higher taxes. I don’t know, for me the trade-off is worth it. Americans are so greedy it’s sad. Instead of having the most people in the developed world die who could’ve been saved we choose profit. Instead of rehabilitating people who run afoul of our laws we choose to piss away tax dollars to lock them up. We have the highest incarceration rate in the world and with many prisons being for profit, you can see why. And those people are statistically more likely to hit that revolving door because we’d rather spend tax money to give to for profit prisons because it “feels better” to punish people, than to divert them to programs that are proven to work and end those cycles.
Mr. Medal of Freedom, Rush Limbaugh is a great example of that. He’s a hardliner when it comes to drug abuse. He says we should “put them in jail and throw away the key”. But having means, when he himself became addicted and got busted with illegal prescriptions wanted our compassion and understanding, then bought his way out of trouble. He now has no sympathy for other people without means in the same boat and still thinks we should lock them up and throw away the key. He’s a hypocrite. Especially when we know the programs he benefited from can actually work for other people, too, if they want the help. But, yeah, let’s keep pissing away tax dollars on things that don’t work to avoid spending them on things that do.
And Trump’s latest plan to gut the ACA further than he has, and to dismantle Social Security and Medicare to pay for his tax cuts to the top will only make the situation much worse. Everyone over 65 reading this probably gets one or both of those programs. If they go away completely you’d be fine? If so, why are you using either right now?
Using tax dollars in ways that make sense isn’t Socialism. Not even that Socialism is a dirty word. Republicans love using Venezuela as the ONLY example of what will happen to the United States if we take care of the poor, if we have decent free education, and make sure everyone has food, and medicine when they need it. It’s funny how you never use countries like Norway in your examples. Or New Zealand. Or Canada. Or Japan. Japan has one of the longest life expectancies on Earth, the lowest murder rate in the world, and somehow the people manage to make a decent living, and have pretty decent lives. But, yeah, let’s keep saying the US can only turn out to be like Venezuela. That assumes the majority of Americans are too stupid to go in any other direction. That sounds like a red state problem to me. The life expectancy in the United States is longer in Blue states with Connecticut having the longest life expectancy in America. Blue states also have lower crime rates, lower health problems, lower amounts of suicide, higher test scores, less teen pregnancy, less abortion, more college graduates, higher per capita GDP. We can do it if we all work together.
We just need to eliminate greed, and be willing to compromise and use some common sense,
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