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New York, 1:21 PM
Tue Nov 10
73 posts in the last 24 hours
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08/12/09
In Australia, we don't have a perfect healthcare system, but we have public access that means people can be treated for things like cancer through the public system... we all pay extra for it on our tax but it's for the greater good of our population.
08/12/09
The idea that people really, truly believe that the government is going to institute "death panels" boggles my brain. The idea that they believe that they are somehow being "patriotic" by opposing what appears to be an extremely incremental change in the vomitorium that is private health insurance makes me want to throw things. There is no longer any nuance in public debate anymore, just name-calling, and as someone who's education and work experience has involved more critical analysis and grassroots action than most of these neatherthals have ever done pisses me off. And yet *we're* the ones who are anti-American (what the fuck does that even mean?). You really care about your country? Fucking learn something about it, learn its history, strive to make it live up to its ideals. Don't throw around "death squads" and "terrorists" and "socialists" (which I guarantee the vast majority couldn't define properly when pressed).
Jon Stewart was right when he told the right wing that they were hurting America.
08/12/09
This is intensely personal for me. I recently lost a friend who would probably still be alive if he'd had access to preventive care. But his employer didn't offer insurance, and between his minor pre-existing condition and his mother's heart problems, private insurance was out of financial reach. If he'd had a regular doctor, they'd have known to keep an eye on his heart. Since he didn't, we didn't find out until the autopsy that he probably needed a bypass. He was 38. (And don't tell me that he could have gone to any emergency room for care: They're all full of other people trying to get non-emergency stuff checked out, and he couldn't have afforded to take days off of work to wait.)
I wish I had the means to fly his mother around to the town hall meetings where people are railing against health care reform. They need to meet her.
08/12/09
08/12/09
This isn't abortion, this isn't gay marriage, this is HEALTH CARE. It shouldn't be this controversial. It's like asking if everyone has the right to access to clean water. It's so fucking basic, how can you oppose it?!
All these people. Could not look someone in the eyes and tell them they do not deserve to, at the very least, have the pain of dying eased just because they do not make enough money to pay for it. This has nothing to do with freedom! That's such a fucking buzzword I wonder if the people screaming about it actually know what it means. We are nowhere near being a socialist country (which if you actually knew anything about socialism, you'd know) so SHUT THE FUCK UP.
Okay thanks. I really needed to vent.
08/12/09
Now in my understanding (which admittedly isn't great) none of the various forms of health care legislation out there include dental. And very, very few employers offer dental insurance.
In the end, the taxpayers paid for brain surgery when regular cleanings- cheap by comparison- would have prevented the need for it. And in the end, the boy died anyway.
Yet dental coverage still isn't considered a necessity.
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08/12/09
"Dmitry Sklyarov is a Russian programmer who gave a talk at a hacker con in Vegas on the failings in Adobe's e-book locks. The FBI threw him in the slam for 30 days. He copped a plea, went home to Russia, and the Russian equivalent of the State Department issued a blanket warning to its researchers to stay away from American conferences, since we'd apparently turned into the kind of country where certain equations are illegal." (Cory Doctorow)
08/12/09
Do any of these people know what it's like to be uninsured and terrified to get sick or injured? Do they know what it's like to spend years paying off ER bills? Or having chronically ill parents who can't afford regular doctor visits or prescriptions? Do they know what it's like to have insurance and still not be able to afford to get sick? Don't even get me started on dental care.
I could give you quite a list of the aches and pains and sprains I've walked off.
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08/12/09
By making it a win-win, where the insurance companies do make more money by having everybody insured, even at a lower price point, and the government steps in to regulate business practices, everybody received something in the transaction. To boot, we're all still capitalists here.
This means my mom, living off of social security, now has the identical health insurance I do from my employer, but for less than half the cost. When she got viral pneumonia, she was able to be treated in a hopsital with top level care (and not pick from a menu that included cough syrup and a reassuring smile, while somebody else got to pick IV anti-virals and fluids).
Thank you home state, for saving my mom's life.
Just like the economy, I wish the government would step in and actually regulate some things as greed knows no bounds when driven by potential profit.
08/12/09
Looking at the woman, she didn't seem like a bad mother, didn't seem to do this because she's cruel. I'm not condoning her behavior in any way; her behavior towards her daughter is wholly unacceptable and the police report is one of the worst I've read in a while. But I can't help wonder if there are larger societal implications. If she had had access to free health care, would things have been different? Does it even matter?
The little girl got out of the hospital yesterday after more than a week. I hope she's ok.
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08/12/09
I mean, I'm about to become a mom. How could I live with myself if I knew that a poor mother somewhere, much like me but with less money, couldn't afford to take her sick kid to the doctor because I wanted to pay lower taxes?
08/12/09
Life, for some people, is only for the moral. Oh, and the middle/upper-middle class. (Who are moral.)