Friday, March 26, 2010

Health Care Reform follow-up

One of the biggest complaints I keep hearing about the recently-passed health care reform bill is that people are being forced to buy something they don't want or can't afford: health insurance.

Well, folks, the government has been forcing me to pay for a war in Iraq I never wanted and can't afford.  I'm paying tax breaks for churches that preach what I believe to be the biggest hoax ever played on humanity. I'm paying subsidies to oil companies which make more profit in a quarter than some countries' entire GDP.  I'm paying for school boards in Texas and other states that makes a mockery of the very concept of education.  I'm paying for a military budget that is more than China's, France's, The UK's, Russia's and the next 10 countries' - combined[0]. I'm paying for upkeep of a nuclear arsenal that could destroy the world 10 times over.  (Why we need to be able to do it more than once I have no idea.)  I'm paying for tax cuts that turned a record surplus into a record deficit and cost twice what the health care bill will.  I'm paying for a war on (some) drugs that has been thoroughly counterproductive and which criminalizes some drugs while glorifying others.  I'm paying for foreign aid to governments who want to kill me.

What's the difference?  I'm paying for those things through my taxes.

Instead the government is going to coerce you into giving money to private industry.  I thought the GOP is fond of privatization and "the free market". 30,000,000+ more people will be paying money to the insurance companies so I suspect their bottom lines will look even better once this bill fully kicks in.  Isn't profit your motive?

How about this?  Rather than push you give money to private, for-profit companies  the government just takes a bit less of your money and uses it to pay for better service and coverage than the private companies will?  Would that be better?

For the record, that would be a single-payer system, akin to Medicare.  Welcome to the socialist party, Comrades.

- Some people are absurdly oblivious

[0] http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending 

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